"Trump effect" and inflation: the number of organized trips to the United States from France fell in 2025 and this trend is continuing in 2026, according to French tour operators, although these figures have not yet been corroborated by data from the airline sector.

From November 1, 2024 to October 31, 2025, member companies of the Syndicat des Entreprises du Tour Operating (Seto) recorded a 14.6% decrease in "package holidays" — organized trips — from France to the United States compared to the previous year, Seto indicated Thursday during a press briefing.

As of December 31, 2025, bookings to the United States for summer 2026 were even down by more than 29%.

"There is a Trump effect, we're not going to deny it," said Patrice Caradec, president of Seto, to the press, adding that "we cannot say that Trump is the best ambassador for tourism in the United States."

Since his return to the White House, the American president and his administration have regularly bullied the Europeans, with the latest episode being the stated desire to seize Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory.

More specifically, the Trump administration is pursuing a policy that discourages tourism and has recently stated its intention to require visa-exempt foreign visitors — including the French — to provide a history of their social media activity over the past five years.

But this is not the only cause of this drop in attendance, nor even the most important one, according to Patrice Caradec, who also noted that "politics" had "never prevented the French from going to Cuba (...), China, or Vietnam".

"The increase in prices" in the United States is central, he said: "Find me a breakfast for less than $40 (per person)," said the president of Seto to illustrate what he considers a hindrance to tourism, while "the French holidaymaker has a very tight budget."

No impact "at this stage" for Air France

A budget that is also likely to be tested by the administration's decision to significantly increase admission fees to the most popular national parks, such as the Grand Canyon, for non-residents.

The airline industry, for its part, claims not to see any clear sign of a decline in North Atlantic routes, including travel from Europe to the United States, but also in the other direction, where Americans benefit from favorable exchange rates.

"We have not seen any impact on the number of aircraft movements" between the Old Continent and the United States in 2025, said Claire Leleu, head of forecasting at the air traffic monitoring organization Eurocontrol, on Thursday during a video conference on last year's results, explaining that traffic on these routes had grown by 3% compared to 2024.

This increase was nevertheless lower than the general trend of 4.1%, which enabled the European aviation sector to recover last year to its 2019 aircraft traffic levels, for the first time since the pandemic.

"At this stage we do not see any impact" on bookings for summer 2026, said Air France CEO Anne Rigail, on the sidelines of a New Year's ceremony for the Air France-KLM group on Wednesday evening, while conceding that her company was monitoring the situation closely.

The airline, which has developed new routes to the United States in recent years, noted periods of "significant decline in demand" for economy class in 2025, but this trend was "generally offset by the good health of the more luxurious premium classes," it explained.

"There has been very, very strong growth on the transatlantic corridor, particularly from North America to Europe" in 2025, stressed Michael Stanton-Geddes, chief economist of the European airports association ACI Europe, during the Eurocontrol videoconference.

But for 2026, "we need to take the risks into account, and we can look at what happened with Canadian tourism to the United States" last summer, a drop of some 30% following aggressive rhetoric from Mr. Trump towards his northern neighbor, he noted.