{"id":31611,"date":"2025-06-23T12:25:35","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T12:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=31611"},"modified":"2025-06-23T12:25:35","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T12:25:35","slug":"travel-outside-your-political-tribe-many-are-saying-no-thanks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=31611","title":{"rendered":"Travel outside your political tribe? Many are saying no thanks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> \n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__content-sign-up-topic-description o3-type-body-base\">Your guide to what Trump\u2019s second term means for Washington, business and the world<\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"article__content-sign-up-iframe close\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"signUpIframe\" data-prev-url=\"\/register\/in-article-sign-up?ft-content-uuid=ad4c4978-e296-4bd3-9729-3fdbc232e66e&amp;newsletter-id=65b8fec772badb00166eafc6\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p><em>The writer is<\/em> <em>a contributing columnist, based in Chicago<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Self-segregation by political affiliation is spreading \u2014 even for travel. President Donald Trump\u2019s policies are scaring off foreign visitors, and domestically, politics increasingly dictates where and how we choose to have fun in the US. <\/p>\n<p>Americans who say politics will \u201cgreatly impact\u201d 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. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cPolitics have entered more aspects of our lives and travel is now one of those areas,\u201d Amir Eylon, head of travel consultancy Longwoods International, tells me. Some of my family members, for example, have their own personal travel ban on \u201cred\u201d 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\u2019t 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. <\/p>\n<p>Tom Moosbrugger, an Ohio librarian, tells me politics isn\u2019t always his primary concern in picking a destination, but it weighs in at the margins. \u201cI want to see Big Bend National Park [in West Texas] but I\u2019m not going\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009to Texas,\u201d because of its conservative politics, he said. <\/p>\n<p>Politics has had a dramatic political effect on visitors from Canada, whose citizens are boycotting US visits and products to protest at Trump\u2019s tariffs and taunts about making it the \u201c51st state\u201d. 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. <\/p>\n<p>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. \u201cIt\u2019s one thing to be really upset about the political environment and another to lose $7,000 on a trip deposit.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>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 \u2014 including in leisure activities. \u201cThe most significant faultline in the second decade of the 21st century is not race, religion or economic status, but political party affiliation,\u201d he has written.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is a new form of tribalism. It\u2019s all about, \u2018are you left or right?\u2019\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009residential neighbourhoods are all completely sorted [by politics]. When you go to your local grocery store you\u2019re going to be surrounded by like-minded consumers,\u201d he tells me. <\/p>\n<p>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. \u201cIt\u2019s all about safety,\u201d he says. Gay conservatives \u201ccan\u2019t go to bars and wear a Trump hat\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009but on a boat, people know they will not be confronted\u201d. <\/p>\n<p>Moosbrugger doesn\u2019t let politics dictate who he travels with. \u201cThat\u2019s against the spirit of travel,\u201d he says. And Larry Bleiberg, former president of the Society of American Travel Writers, agrees \u201csomething is lost\u201d in political group travel. He says: \u201cTravel\u2019s 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.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>In my view, too, more political silos are the last thing we need in Trump\u2019s America.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/ad4c4978-e296-4bd3-9729-3fdbc232e66e\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free Your guide to what Trump\u2019s second term means for Washington,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":31612,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}