Trump Slump Bumped – extraordinary changes in US visitor counts that turn a fall into growth.

FOXTROTS*

 

Trump Slump Bumped – extraordinary changes in US visitor counts that turn a fall into growth.

The US has produced a new set of figures on visitor arrivals in the US. It reverses the Trump Slump into a Bump. But the new counts do not correct what may have been a fault; they deliberately miscategorise figures, which produces a Trump Bump.

 

We are shocked, but we have seen no other reports that have analysed the changes.

 

Here is the story:

 

Earlier this year, many reports on visitor arrivals in the US were reporting a ‘Trump Slump’ – a fall in visitors prompted by the negative actions and words of the newish US president, Donald Trump. When he was not banning or trying to ban certain types or citizens from visiting the US, his words were unfriendly.

 

Not only did his words ascertain that the US was on its way to becoming great again, but, almost concomitantly, non-Americans (=foreigners) were not so good, at best.

 

In those circumstances, there should have been little surprise that the number of visitors would fall. Even if the banned nationals were tiny suppliers of visitors to the US (we guess some country-markets in the hundreds, and maybe 10,000 over a year), many others would, sensibly, have reconsidered a visit to the US.

 

Would a France national, moslem, born in France of parents from Morocco, continue to assume a visit to the US would be trouble free?

 

But a fall in visitors, of course, even if a likely outcome of specific actions, was not welcomed by the US administration. Its discourse was, and is, that everything is better for everyone in the US, and possibly better than since the beginning of time.

 

This is not to say that we accuse the US government of helping the US administration to falsify facts. But its actions nevertheless raise suspicions.

 

Last April, the US government said it was checking visitor-arrival counts because some visitors may have been miscategorised.

 

The country’s DMO (NTTO, National Travel and Tourism Office) says some arrivals were incorrectly reported as showing US as the country of residence. The passport country for many (NTTO says ‘a large number’, but provides no further definition to enable others to define it thus) of the affected records was Brazil, China, India.

 

This month, NTTO announced that the problem has now been fixed.

 

But, we declare, it has not been corrected.

 

The NTTO says any visitor-arrival that listed the US as the country of residence has now been changed to show the passport country as the country of residence. This is actually changing what may have been a mistake (obviously most arrivals with India passports were/are not residents of the US, even if some were recorded as US residents) to a clear mistake (assuming all those non-US-citizen visitor-arrivals were/are not resident in the US).

 

This exercise has reversed the Trump Slump into a Trump Bump.

 

In general terms, based on our notes above about the unwelcome sentiment in Trump’s US for ‘foreigners’, the visitor-arrival count now seems wrong. That said, we accept that few figures ‘seem’ right all the time; there are always surprises.

 

The NTTO says the change (it says ‘corrective’ but as we have noted, these are not corrections, this is just re-categorisation) means the mistake (if that is what it was) in 2017 affected 3.7mn visitors in 2017 – almost a full Trump Year – yet only 540,000 visitors in non-Trump 2016.

 

The other broad figures (more, with an accompanying table, in a WYSK report, what-you-should-know, from Travel Business Analyst):

-The new figures show there were 38.9mn +2.0% overseas visitors in 2017. The old figures were 35.2mn -6.2%.

-For total visitors (ie including Canada, Mexico), new 76.9mn +0.7%, old 73.3mn -3.1%.

-There were no changes for visitors from Canada, Mexico in 2017, but changes in 2016 and 2015. Although the changes in those earlier years were small, why were those 2017 figures ‘corrected’ before the ‘mistake’ in the categorisation was discovered? Even though the Canada and Mexico visitor-arrival counts are so big (almost 40mn in 2017), no visitor was mis-categorised?

 

 

The Fox. Remember, I’m an industry expert in the parallel world.

*Fox – sly.  Trots – left-leaning (Trotsky) plus its more insalubrious meaning.  Foxtrots – leading the industry in a dance.

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Trottings*; Nogo Opodo.

Trottings*; Nogo Opodo.

A series of operational issues indicates serious faults at the Opodo OTA.

 

On booking a flight, the site indicated that I would be given the opportunity to book baggage before making the final payment. So I continued with the process. When I reached the procedure to pay, I still thought that a window or other opportunity would be given to add baggage. But no, it simply confirmed the booking – thus with no baggage included.

 

I then check under My Trip, or similar, where I was given the opportunity to add bags. So I clicked.

 

The wording, precisely, was ‘Whoops! It seems we can’t book this online’. In other words, Opodo could not do what it said it could do. But the solution, again in Opodo’s words, was ‘Please call us to add your baggage!’

 

So I called the number and made my request. After being put on hold and what seemed a long wait for a simple request (but perhaps it was only 2/3 minutes), the agent said No, they could not book the baggage now. Only 24 hours before the flight!

 

This means that on three occasions, Opodo had offered what it did not provide.

 

I asked the agent how much the extra baggage would cost. She could not tell me; I had to wait until I booked the baggage – but obviously there is a risk that just 24 hours before the flight, this would be costly.

 

On two separate log-in occasions (on different days), I went back to the Opodo site, My Trip, and opened chat. Four windows were requested, of which two were obligatory (first and last name; duh!). I could not connect with those two and so added the two others. No luck.

 

The message: ‘There was an issue starting your chat session. Please verify your connection and that you submitted all required information properly, then try again’.

 

The information required was obviously correct (as it was my name and there was no connection to a reservation or email address), and so I presume it is another Opodo fault.

 

Of course I will not use Opodo again. Even if the operational hitches described are fixed, there is still the matter of Opodo’s relationship with the airline. I chose Opodo because of its known reputation, but it seems that is no longer enough. There are services that Opodo cannot provide if its arrangement with the airline does not allow this.

 

And so if the price difference between the OTA and airline offer is not great, I will in future select the airline’s offer – although I might try one of the big others such as Expedia to see if they are slipping as Opodo is.

 

The Fox. Remember, I’m an intellectual in the parallel world.

 

*Trottings = Trip Jottings

UK travel trends; trouble x6

FOXTROTS*

 

UK travel trends; trouble x6

I’ve just worked on UK travel data for the first three months of this year. It is trouble x6; falls in every month, both inbound and outbound.

 

Remember, the fall of the UK currency after the Brexit vote in 2016 was expected to boost visitor arrivals, but also prompt a fall in outbound travel.

 

Whoops.

 

Outbound may be matching expectations, falling -5.4% in Q1. But inbound also fell every month in Q1 (January by a painful -15%), and -5.6% for all-Q1.

 

Could the difference be business travel? Commentary (as above) relates the currency fall primarily to leisure travel. Business travel or even others such as sports-, event-, religious-travel are less affected by currency changes.

 

Could it be that business travellers are having fewer reasons to visit the UK until the post-Brexit economic rules are set?

 

The Fox. Remember, I’m an industry expert in the parallel world.

*Fox – sly.  Trots – left-leaning (Trotsky) plus its more insalubrious meaning.  Foxtrots – leading the industry in a dance.

London down, not even out

FOXTROTS*

 

London down, not even out

London visitor data (from Visit Britain) is not timely. Figures are surprising nevertheless.

 

In Q4, arrivals fell 8%. Remember that this was not supposed to happen. After the Brexit vote in 2016, the fall of the UK currency was supposed to boost visitor arrivals, although probably also prompt a fall in outbound travel.

 

It hasn’t happened like that. Even before the UK is out of the European Union, the London visitor count is down.

 

Of course a fall can have many causes. But the size of that Q4 fall, -8%, is a surprise – that is 400,000 fewer visitors in that period, say 4000 fewer daily.

 

Then comes #2 shock – Q1 figures show a -10% fall! There are fewer visitors in Q1 than in Q4, but that bigger percentage fall produced a bigger actual fall – around 5000 fewer visitors daily.

 

The Brexit surprises continue.

 

The Fox. Remember, I’m an industry expert in the parallel world.

 

*Fox – sly.  Trots – left-leaning (Trotsky) plus its more insalubrious meaning.  Foxtrots – leading the industry in a dance.