Travel outside your political tribe? Many are saying no thanks

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The writer is a contributing columnist, based in Chicago

Self-segregation by political affiliation is spreading — even for travel. President Donald Trump’s policies are scaring off foreign visitors, and domestically, politics increasingly dictates where and how we choose to have fun in the US.

Americans who say politics will “greatly impact” their travel choices has jumped to 42 per cent from 24 per cent in September 2024, according to one recent survey. And an April survey of travellers from five countries found that Trump administration policies are increasingly deterring international visitors to the US, with 63 per cent citing the political climate and 38 per cent mentioning safety. New York has cut its projected tourism numbers for the year from 67mn to 64mn, saying overseas visitors are being deterred by visa and border worries.

“Politics have entered more aspects of our lives and travel is now one of those areas,” Amir Eylon, head of travel consultancy Longwoods International, tells me. Some of my family members, for example, have their own personal travel ban on “red” or Republican states, preventing us from going together to Texas (the longtime home of my only sister), Florida (where my eldest niece lives) or even to neighbouring Wisconsin. They aren’t alone: since November, the percentage of people avoiding specific US cities or states because of their political stripe has risen from 12 to 20 per cent, according to Eylon.

Tom Moosbrugger, an Ohio librarian, tells me politics isn’t always his primary concern in picking a destination, but it weighs in at the margins. “I want to see Big Bend National Park [in West Texas] but I’m not going . . . to Texas,” because of its conservative politics, he said.

Politics has had a dramatic political effect on visitors from Canada, whose citizens are boycotting US visits and products to protest at Trump’s tariffs and taunts about making it the “51st state”. According to the StatsCanada website, Canadian residents returning home from the US in April by automobile fell 35.2 per cent from the year earlier.

Excluding Canada, however, preliminary data from the US International Trade Administration shows international visitors to the US fell only 0.8 per cent in May from the previous year. Sarah Kopit, editor-in-chief of the travel news website Skift, is sceptical about whether politics will drive travel for long. “It’s one thing to be really upset about the political environment and another to lose $7,000 on a trip deposit.”

But Shanto Iyengar, a Stanford political scientist who studies American political polarisation, says the long-term trend is towards more and more self-segregation by political tribe — including in leisure activities. “The most significant faultline in the second decade of the 21st century is not race, religion or economic status, but political party affiliation,” he has written.

“There is a new form of tribalism. It’s all about, ‘are you left or right?’ . . . residential neighbourhoods are all completely sorted [by politics]. When you go to your local grocery store you’re going to be surrounded by like-minded consumers,” he tells me.

Politics affects not just where Americans travel, but how. Conservative Cruises, for example, offers right-wing celebrity speakers plus a virtual guarantee that travellers can circulate freely from hot tub to buffet without ever being forced to listen to political views they disagree with. Now Steve Harris of Right of Centre Events tells me he is putting together gay and lesbian cruises for conservatives. “It’s all about safety,” he says. Gay conservatives “can’t go to bars and wear a Trump hat . . . but on a boat, people know they will not be confronted”.

Moosbrugger doesn’t let politics dictate who he travels with. “That’s against the spirit of travel,” he says. And Larry Bleiberg, former president of the Society of American Travel Writers, agrees “something is lost” in political group travel. He says: “Travel’s biggest gift is to expose people to different viewpoints and different perspectives. But when you join a group with people who think just like you, you end up travelling in an echo chamber.”

In my view, too, more political silos are the last thing we need in Trump’s America.