Australian travel to the United States has fallen off a cliff. The country drew a peak of 1.09 million Australian visitors in 2018, but in the 12 months to June this year only about 680,000 made the trip — the only one of Australians' top five overseas destinations that failed to rebound to pre-COVID levels. Indonesia, New Zealand, Japan and China have all bounced back. The US hasn't.
The explanations are layered. A strong US dollar against the Aussie dollar has made a Stateside holiday painfully expensive, but politics has clearly played its part too. With ICE raids dominating headlines and anti-foreigner sentiment running high, plenty of travellers simply felt uncomfortable about going — some pushed for an outright boycott, and many who argued against one (including this source's columnist) found the idea intensely unpopular.
The mood may be shifting. Following the recent US midterm results — the so-called blue wave, in which American voters appeared to reject the policies that had unsettled so many observers abroad — the writer argues the country feels like a friendlier, more welcoming place than it did a fortnight ago. Americans, he notes, were clearly bothered by the same things troubling outsiders, and democratic politics is cyclical: the same people who lived through the past few years are still there, and punishing them with a boycott always sat awkwardly.
That said, the column is refreshingly honest about what hasn't changed. Concerns about heavy-handed immigration enforcement remain live. Gun violence remains an issue. The leader is the same. Airfares are still high, and the exchange rate sits around a brutal 69 US cents to the Australian dollar. The writer himself says the US isn't at the top of his personal wish list — he'd rather chase the last corners of Japan, the fjords of Norway and the food of Mexico first.
Still, the practical takeaway for travellers is straightforward: if political discomfort was the thing keeping you from booking that national parks road trip or city break, the calculus may have changed. What's always been great about the US — the pop culture, the music, the national parks, the sheer variety of cities and food scenes — is all still there, and possibly with a friendlier reception on arrival. Expect others to start planning trips; whether it earns a spot on your own list is another question.
