Record-Setting December Exports Drive Annual Exports to New Heights in 2016

WASHINGTON – The National Travel and Tourism Office today announced that international visitors spent more than $21.2 billion on travel to, and tourism-related activities within, the United States in December, an increase of nearly three percent ($564 million) when compared to December 2015 – setting a new record for monthly U.S. travel and tourism exports.

International visitors spent a record-setting $247.1 billion on U.S. travel and tourism-related goods and services in 2016, an ever-so-slight increase (0.4%) when compared to record levels of spending in 2015; conversely, Americans have spent an estimated $158.9 billion abroad, yielding a balance of trade surplus of more than $88.2 billion for the year.

Monthly Summary

  • Travel Receipts: Purchases of travel and tourism-related goods and services by international visitors traveling in the United States totaled $13.1 billion during December, an increase of nearly 1 percent when compared to December 2015. These goods and services include food, lodging, recreation, gifts, entertainment, local transportation in the United States, and other items incidental to foreign travel.Travel receipts accounted for 62 percent of total U.S. travel and tourism exports in December.
  • Passenger Fare Receipts: Fares received by U.S. carriers from international visitors totaled $3.5 billion for the month, an increase of nearly 2 percent when compared to December 2015. Passenger fare receipts accounted for 16 percent of total U.S. travel and tourism exports in December.
  • Medical/Education/Short-Term Worker(1): Expenditures for educational and health-related tourism, along with all expenditures by border, seasonal, and other short-term workers, totaled nearly $4.6 billion in December, an appreciable increase of 10 percent when compared to the same period in the previous year. Medical tourism, education, and short-term worker receipts accounted for 22 percent of total U.S. travel and tourism exports in December.

(2)In June 2014 the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) completed the most comprehensive restructuring of the U.S. international economic accounts since 1976 in an effort to bring our international accounts into closer conformity with international guidelines. As a result, BEA now uses a broader definition of travel that includes education-related and health-related travel and expenditures on goods and services by border, seasonal, and other short-term workers. Therefore, all travel and tourism-related trade data have been revised back to 1999. To learn more, please visit:http://travel.trade.gov/pdf/restructuring-travel.pdf

NTTO is responsible for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating international travel and tourism statistics for the U.S. Travel and Tourism Statistical System. For more monthly travel and tourism-related trade data dating back to 1999, please visit the NTTO site at: http://travel.trade.gov/outreachpages/download_data_table/Monthly_Exports_Imports_Balance.xlsx.

Annual 2016 estimates will be revised with the release of the January 2017 monthly trade data, as the December 2016 figure, which is used in the monthly summation to yield an annual figure, will be revised on March 7, 2017. Therefore, the annual 2016 figure is very preliminary and should be treated as such.