2016 regional and country-specific spending data released by the International Trade Administration’s National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO) reveals that visitors from China remain the highest-spending visitors in the U.S., spending a record-setting USD 33 billion in the United States last year.

 

This consolidates China’s position as the number one source market for the U.S. following a trend of double-digit growth in tourism expenditure every year since 2007. Between 2007 and 2016, total travel and tourism-related spending by Chinese visitors rose from USD 2.7 billion to USD 33 billion.

 

Despite the fact that China only ranks as the fifth largest source of U.S. visitors, China’s 2.97 million visitors to the United States managed to outspend the third and fourth largest visitor markets combined: Japan (3.58 million visitors), and the United Kingdom (4.57 million visitors). Chinese visitor spending also holds a margin of approximately USD 10 billion against the first and second-largest source markets of Canada and Mexico.

 

This positions Chinese visitors as the by far the most profitable visitors to the U.S., with an average spending of approximately USD 9,200 per visit. Of course, a proportion of Chinese tourist spending is likely to represent capital outflows that China is trying to prevent with new measures, making it difficult to predict if the high average tourist expenditure is sustainable in the long run.

 

There were no changes in the rankings of the top five spenders in the United States, which include China, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and the United Kingdom, respectively.