Tough talk on tariffs, reports of border detentions and unfavorable exchange rates are putting some travelers, especially Canadians, off trips to the US this yr.
But those in Asia say they’re avoiding trips to the U.S. for various reasons.
Nearly 80% of Southeast Asian travelers said the US is losing appeal as a travel destination, in line with a CNBC Travel survey.
One in 4 said their interest in visiting the country declined prior to now six months, with respondents saying they’re more concerned about potential discrimination, actions by the Trump administration and gun violence than they’re about costs.
News about tariffs and U.S. border policies negatively affected younger travelers greater than older ones, the survey showed, but younger travelers were still more prone to be concerned with traveling to the U.S. overall.
The survey of 6,000 international travelers from Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia was conducted by the market research company Milieu Insight from May 22 to June 10.
Nearly half of those surveyed said they’d visited the U.S. no less than once prior to now.
Country differences
But despite their concerns, some respondents — particularly those from Vietnam (57%) and the Philippines (49%) — said they’re more concerned with visiting the U.S. now than they were six months ago.
That will need to do with the scale of their diasporas in the US, said Zilmiyah Kamble, senior lecturer in hospitality and tourism management at James Cook University in Singapore. As of 2024, Filipinos were estimated to be the fourth-largest immigrant group in the US, and Vietnamese residents were at No. 8, in line with the Pew Research Center.
“It might be due to family connections who live there,” said Kamble. But there’s also “the aspirational factor and the soft power of U.S. culture, through TV shows, that also may be very attractive.”
Filipina Pinky David spoke to CNBC Travel from the U.S., which she said she visits often for work, family and holidays.
“I feel the vast majority of Filipinos, on the whole, still consider coming to America,” she said.
Nevertheless, the survey showed that one nation showed little interest in setting foot on American soil anytime soon. Some 55% of Singaporeans said they’re less concerned with visiting the U.S. than they were last November. Only 7% said they at the moment are more concerned with going, the info showed.
The survey also showed that Vietnamese respondents had the strongest response to tariffs announced by the Trump administration. In April 2025, Trump announced a 46% tariff on imports from Vietnam, before reaching a trade deal on July 2 that reduced the quantity to twenty% for Vietnamese goods and 40% for goods shipped to Vietnam from other countries for final shipment to the US.
Negative buzz
CNBC’s survey mirrors a YouGov report released in March which showed that since January 2025, global “buzz” and “impressions” of the U.S. as a travel destination have plummeted.
Buzz vs. impressions
- Buzz: hearing anything positive or negative a couple of destination
- Impressions: having a positive or negative impression of a destination
Impressions of the U.S. continued to drop into March, with net scores falling into negative territory in Europe, the Middle East/North Africa, and Canada and Mexico, in line with YouGov data provided to CNBC.
Nevertheless, the number of people that said they were considering the U.S. for his or her next international trip remained relatively stable, in line with the YouGov report.
After the election of Donald Trump in November 2024, interest in visiting the U.S. rose in several parts of the world, from the United Arab Emirates and India to Hong Kong and Poland, in line with the report.
Nevertheless, interest in visiting dropped somewhere else, including Singapore, Canada, and Northern and Western Europe. Overall, global travel interest in trips to the U.S. fell 13%, in line with the YouGov report.
Online sentiment
Online sentiment about traveling to the U.S. also varies by country, in line with the analytics company Sprout Social.
The corporate found that there have been greater than 87,000 mentions — and greater than 1 million engagements, in the shape of likes, comments, or shares — on X, YouTube, Tumblr and Reddit from April 30 to June 3 that discussed travel to the US. Nearly 50,000 were from Canada, of which 45% were negative, the info showed.
Nevertheless, 96% of the 18,000 mentions and interactions that originated from India were either positive or neutral, it showed.
Interestingly, probably the most negative sentiment about U.S. travel got here from users within the U.S. itself, the info showed.
