Air4casts reveals tourism outlook for the US, focuses on visitors from Asia Pacific

Indian Traveller Profile Q3-Q4 2024

Travel data specialist Air4casts’ second half 2024 tourism outlook for the USA focuses on visitors from the Asia Pacific region.

It notes that tourists from China will be noticeable by their absence in the second half of this year compared with pre-pandemic 2019, adding that the frequent Japanese visitor fits a unique profile and belongs to a large but low-spending segment.

That segment is set aside from Air4casts’ analysis because the principal destination is the Pacific Islands and historically 75% of Japanese travelers are on vacation while 80% of visits are for seven nights or less.

So, according to Air4casts, the question is whether easily made Indian tourist assumptions have commercial significance given that the visitor count is likely easily to exceed half a million.

The US is the second most popular destination for Indian nationals living abroad after the UAE. The report cites 2020 Census data showing more than 750,000 are resident in New York/Newark and more than 500,000 in San Francisco/Oakland/San José. Last year the total count was close to 5 million, the second largest community after Mexicans.

This high level of resident Indian nationals living permanently in the US affects the profile of those short term Indian visitors coming to the country on tourist or business visas.

In summary, and in sharp contrast to Chinese visitors to the USA, air4casts notes that 70% of Indian visitors will be male with an average age of over 40, over 80% will be traveling alone and, crucially, more than half will be visiting friends and relatives in the US with an average stay time of about a month and a half.

According to Air4casts, expenditure patterns tell a different story. Benchmarking principally against the somewhat elusive Chinese visitor, amongst visitors from the Asia/Pacific region only the Chinese and Singaporeans spend more in total than Indian visitors. On the downtown shopping line Indian visitors will be the highest per capita spenders and at the airport all shoppers are eclipsed by the Chinese but Indian shoppers are ranked #2 overall.