Boston officials are preparing for a significant drop in tourism for the remainder of 2025 as international visitors reconsider travel to the U.S. under the second Trump administration.

Mayor Michelle Wu mentioned the industry during a recent address on the coming fiscal year, describing tourism to the city as down.

“So, we need to be prepared, as every city is buckling down for the potential serious financial crisis triggered by federal economic policy under this administration,” the mayor said.

For specific figures, Wu’s office referred GBH News to Meet Boston, the city’s tourism agency. The agency said the number of international tourists coming to Boston hasn’t dropped yet, but it’s lowering its expectations for inbound travel by 10% for the rest of the year.

“We were expecting about a 4% or 5% growth in international visitation this year,” said Meet Boston CEO Martha Sheridan. “So, it’s frustrating for us.”

Sheridan said it’s difficult to put the financial impact into numbers at this point, but believes it will be significant. Tourism represents a large piece of Boston’s local economy. The hospitality sector supports roughly 56,000 jobs, accounting for 6.4% of the city’s workforce. Across Massachusetts, international travelers spent $2.9 billion in 2023, the most recent year of available data. Overall tourism spending in Massachusetts generated $2.3 billion in taxes in 2023 for municipalities and the state and supported 154,330 jobs.

Canadian tourists and Boston

Canadians represent by far the largest number of international travelers that come to Boston. According to Meet Boston, Canada accounts for some 800,000 visitors each year, roughly a quarter of all international travelers.

While Boston has yet to see a tangible drop in inbound travel, national figures paint a grim picture of what’s ahead. According to the global travel forecaster Tourism Economics, border crossings were down by nearly a third in March compared to March 2023. Air travel from Canada to the U.S. was also down by about 13%, and the company’s forecast for overall travel into the country is down nearly 20%.

“The feelings of international travelers toward the U.S. have really turned sour,” said Tourism Economics president Adam Sacks.

For some tourists, like Canadian Curtis Allen, the decision not to visit the U.S. was personal. The British Colombia resident and his partner were planning a road trip to the Oregon coast with their dogs in September, but they opted to cancel their trip due to President Donald Trump’s comments about making Canada the 51st state.

“It became very clear that the president was not joking about annexing Canada,” Allen said. “So we’re going to be defending our country by not supporting another economy.”

Heightened enforcement by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is also putting would-be travelers on high alert, according to Meet Boston’s Martha Sheridan.

“Certainly the ICE action around the city of Boston and Massachusetts is of big concern to us, because it does impact people’s perceptions of being safe,” she said.

Multiple people with legal status have been detained at Logan Airport since the new administration took office, including a German national with a green card. That prompted the German government to update its travel advice, warning that a visa doesn’t guarantee entry to the U.S.

Elizabeth Schumacher, an American-born journalist who lives in Germany and works for the German national broadcaster Deutsche Welle, said the new guidance has led to a tangible shift in the way Germans and other Europeans are thinking about travel to the U.S.

“I think a lot of people thought, like, ‘Okay, we obviously don’t agree with what the administration is doing, but that’s a political thing. It has nothing to do with life on the ground in the U.S. for me as a tourist,’” she said. “Now, people are definitely reconsidering that.”

Several other countries have also changed guidance for U.S. bound tourists since the Trump administration took office, including Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Finland and France.

Greece recently signed an agreement with Canada to promote tourism between the two countries. Experts believe that could be indicative of a new trend: more travelers from Europe forgoing burgers and baseball at Fenway in favor of poutine and hockey in Toronto.