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T_i_B

(14,734 posts)
Sat Apr 29, 2017, 05:04 AM Apr 2017

Theresa May's freudian slip

If any non-Tory politician had come out with a gaffe like this the media would have been all over it for weeks. Very notable though given how much support for leaving the EU there is in many coastal towns struggling to compete with Spain for retirees and holiday makers.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/theresa-may-in-wales-britain-to-lead-the-world-in-preventing-tourism-2017-4

Theresa May wants Britain to "lead the world in preventing tourism," she said today in her first embarrassing slip up of the general election campaign.

Speaking during a campaign visit to Wales, the prime minister said she wanted "to strike deals across the world for trading, for exporting British goods and services," but then added: "We want to lead the world in preventing tourism."

It is likely that May had intended to refer to "terrorism," given that she followed the comments with references to modern slavery and national security.

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T_i_B

(14,734 posts)
2. This is true
Sat Apr 29, 2017, 05:24 AM
Apr 2017

This is the flip side to unchecked NIMBY-ism, you also end up deterring investment from outside, which makes everyone poorer in the long run.

http://www.salon.com/2017/03/31/trumps-america-the-trump-slump-in-travel-is-costing-america-billions_partner/

Well, that didn’t take long. People around the world have taken a look at Donald Trump and decided his America is not a place they want to visit. The result has been labeled the “Trump Slump,” a drop in international tourism that’s predicted to cost the United States more than $7 billion. Experts across the travel industry have sounded the alarm that the Trump presidency, already destructive on so many fronts, may also do serious financial damage to the country’s $250 billion tourism sector.

Frommer’s, a prominent travel guide, notes that “the prestigious Travel Weekly magazine (as close to an ‘official’ travel publication as they come) has set the decline in foreign tourism at 6.8 percent” for this year. ForwardKeys, which crunches travel numbers, points to a 6.5 percent downturn in international travel to the U.S. in the week after Trump attempted to issue the Muslim travel ban in January. During the same period, the company found reservations for U.S.-bound flights from Western Europe fell 14 percent and plunged 38 percent from across the Middle East. And a survey released this month by the Global Business Travel Association concluded “45 percent of European business travel professionals say they are less likely to schedule meetings or events in the U.S.,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

The numbers offer evidence that Trump has turned off potential visitors from around the world. The resounding message of Trump’s “America First” stance, his obsession with the Mexico border wall, his anti-immigrant and anti-refugee policies, his Muslim ban, and his rudeness to longstanding allies is that America is inhospitable to foreigners. Predictably, international travelers are opting to stay away—and that includes the European ones that Trump and his supporters are totally cool with.

Rhiannon12866

(203,041 posts)
3. Thanks! Good write up!
Sat Apr 29, 2017, 05:34 AM
Apr 2017

That was my first thought when he came out with his ridiculous "travel bans." Nobody was going to want to come to the US on the off chance - or good chance - they wouldn't be let in. And a whole lot of people aren't going to want to travel overseas if there's the slightest chance they'd be prevented from returning home. We already heard the horror stories. Despite the judges' overturning his "executive orders," people are apprehensive, and rightly so. Some "job creator!" And I grew up visiting The Statue of Liberty, learning how we were "a nation of immigrants." And I come from immigrants - both sides of the family.

T_i_B

(14,734 posts)
4. It's worth remembering what tourism is about
Sat Apr 29, 2017, 05:38 AM
Apr 2017

It's about enjoying yourself and relaxing. That's why we go on holiday. Being messed about at customs is neither relaxing nor enjoyable. And the possibility having to endure that sort of nonsense is a very good reason not to go on holiday to a nation that messes visitors about like that.

Rhiannon12866

(203,041 posts)
5. Exactly!
Sat Apr 29, 2017, 05:46 AM
Apr 2017

I'm in Northeastern New York and we generally get lots of tourists in these parts, the lakes in the summer and skiers in the winter. When I was in school, I worked summers at an amusement park. We had quite a few Canadian visitors and remember meeting families from other countries, Japanese, Indian, Dutch, it was a family kind of place. Since this is the first summer of Trump, I'm wondering how the tourist industry that this area depends on will be affected now.

DFW

(54,057 posts)
6. An expensive dollar and a foreigner-hostile environment. Two strkes against you.
Sat Apr 29, 2017, 06:42 AM
Apr 2017

My wife will accompany me to Cape Cod as she does every summer, but this year, instead of traveling around with me on the rest of my annual summer odyssey in America, she won't even be visiting our daughter in New York, much less come with me elsewhere. She will drive with me back to Boston and fly directly back to Germany from there. No annual convention (Denver this year), no Dallas, no Washington, just relaxing in the friendly atmosphere of the outer Cape, and then directly back to Europe. I'll miss her for the three weeks I'll be on the road in North America, but I can't say that I blame her. our daughter will come up to stay with us on the Cape for a weekend or two, but she understands her mom's reluctance to stay in the States and longer than my vacation will allow.

Rhiannon12866

(203,041 posts)
7. Sure sounds like Trump has ruined your vacation, like he no doubt ruined thousands of others
Sat Apr 29, 2017, 06:55 AM
Apr 2017

I certainly can't blame your wife, you never know who Trump will target next. And this not only affects your plans, but it'll certainly be a disappointment for your daughter. I've also wondered what my Dad would think, he was a great world traveler, he planned a special vacation every year. Think I told you that the country he first wanted to visit was Germany since it affected him greatly when he first visited there as a young student in the early '50s, after the war. The world has been getting smaller, with more of us feeling like citizens of the world like never before. Just a few months of Trump has turned back the clock on that.

DFW

(54,057 posts)
9. He hasn't yet managed to ruin Cape Cod, at least
Sat Apr 29, 2017, 09:18 AM
Apr 2017

Wellfleet, Truro and Provincetown will hardly EVER be welcoming ground for angry, sour-faced Republicans.

Trump has only turned back the clock on OUR country's ability to turn out world citizens. Even then, he would have failed with my family. We deliberately raised our daughters bilingually and bi-culturally. Our daughters were citizens of both Germany and the USA from birth, have gone to school in both, and one now lives in Manhattan, calling it home, and the other lives in Frankfurt, working for an American firm, and travels constantly. My wife still feels very much German, and is still more at home here in Germany than anywhere else. I still feel very much American, but speak eight other languages than English, and have a job that puts me in a different country almost every day. I love it, and though I may not be fully European, most of my friends ARE, and I almost never have lunch with someone with whom I speak English. I have no problem living here as an integrated foreigner.

My sister-in-law, a native of Japan, ironically never spoke Japanese with her two sons. She left Japan in 1980, having risen as far as she could in her field as a woman at the time in Japan. Her field was banking, and she made it all the way to bank teller. When she left to marry my brother in Washington, within a few years, she was vice-director of the World Bank for Asia. She remains fully Japanese, speaking far worse English than my wife, even after living in the States for over 35 years. But she rejected the Japanese culture of subjugating women to menial jobs, and never immersed her sons in it--something they have never fully forgiven her for. Fluency in Japanese is always a ticket to some kind of interesting job. Of course, their sons are no idiots, and they managed to get interesting jobs on their own. One studied Arabic, and got a job with a small Washington think tank, and is currently serving in central Nigeria doing who-knows-what. The other got his doctorate in engineering at Stanford, and remained out in northern California.

All of us find it supremely ironic that Trump has been married to two foreigners, and still has no earthly clue what it means to be one.

Bernardo de La Paz

(48,789 posts)
8. That's 6.5% for this year. Expect much more cutbacks in tourism next year
Sat Apr 29, 2017, 07:53 AM
Apr 2017

Many non-refundable bookings were already made for 2017 before tRump was inaugurated.

Do not expect the same number of bookings for 2018.

mopinko

(69,808 posts)
10. this is gonna hit chicago hard. nyc too i assume.
Sat Apr 29, 2017, 09:23 AM
Apr 2017

for the past 20 years we have invested here in tourism. and we have done a damn good job, too.

that and if they do manage to screw up healthcare, we are gonna loose so many jobs. and the healthcare jobs are good jobs, too.

back to the 80's.

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