Johanna Jainchill
When I walked into the Travel Weekly offices for the first time almost 20 years ago, the world, and the travel industry, were in a very different place.
We were a year away from the iPhone's debut, and the first tweet was soon to be sent. US Airways, Continental and Northwest all still existed. New Orleans had been devastated by Hurricane Katrina just months before, and air travel was about to become more onerous: The TSA that year both implemented its shoes-off policy at airport security and the 3-1-1 liquid rule for carry-ons.
I joined the Travel Weekly team as cruise editor, and one of my earliest assignments was the inaugural sailing of Royal Caribbean's 3,600-passenger Freedom of the Seas, which in 2006 took the largest-cruise-ship-in-the-world title from the Queen Mary 2. Its headline innovation was the FlowRider surf simulator.
In almost two decades since then, I've held a range of roles at Travel Weekly. From cruise I'd go on to cover travel agencies and travel technology before focusing on our destination sections. For the last 10 years, I've been an editor overseeing our news coverage, while always keeping one foot on the reporting side, covering travel policy.
I briefly returned to report in 2020 as interim cruise editor during the Covid lockdown. It was the travel industry's most challenging moment, and in many ways, its most inspired. I've never been prouder to be part of the Travel Weekly team as we reported on the industry when nobody could travel, keeping our anxious readers updated on border policy, health and sanitation protocols, plans for closing and plans for reopening.
Our readers booked and rebooked clients and did it all again, often without pay. As difficult as the pandemic era was, I believe it showcased the best that Travel Weekly and our readers can be. I'm still in awe of the industry's resilience in the face of an existential threat and how much stronger it is as a result.
Which brings us to this moment. The TSA ended the shoes-off policy last summer and Royal Caribbean's 5,600-passenger Icon-class ships are now the world's largest cruise vessels. Twitter no longer exists as a brand, and we're up to the 17th version of the iPhone.
I'm still getting used to the idea of being editor in chief of Travel Weekly, for as our longtime readers know, Arnie Weissmann's shoes would be very difficult to fill. And I won't try to. Arnie will continue to be the ambassador for travel that he always has been in his new role as Explorer at Large and will still be an active contributor to Travel Weekly.
Arnie has always made being part of the travel industry feel special -- and important. He instilled in me the idea that our job at Travel Weekly is to cover the travel industry the way a sportswriter may write about a home team: When things are going poorly, that's got to be covered, but we still want the team to win.
I plan to continue embracing that ethos in our coverage. And right now, it is not the actions of travel companies but rather the government's that are, to put it mildly, impacting tourism in a negative way. As we've reported numerous times over the last year, governmental policies are, intentionally or not, contributing to a decline in international visitors to the U.S.: the 72 million arrivals in 2024 are expected to drop to 68 million in 2025.
The U.S. Travel Association put that into remarkable perspective: We're the only nation in the world that saw a reduction in travel last year. U.S. Travel CEO Geoff Freeman, who's been vocal about the reasons and potential solutions for this, said that unlike past downturns caused by outside events or circumstances, such as the impact of 9/11 or a sky-high dollar, this downturn can be attributed to "self-inflicted wounds."
For those who have been around long enough to remember, this isn't the first time the U.S. has found itself committing an unforced error. Arnie wrote in 2007 about data from the year prior showing that international visitors feared U.S. immigration officers more than they feared terrorists.
That was during a time when major terror attacks had struck some of the world's most-visited places, including New York, London, Bali and Madrid. Current issues -- antagonizing Canada, stories of travelers being detained and having their phones and laptops searched, plans to require visitors to submit five years of social media history -- don't seem to have any bearing on making the U.S. a safer place, but rather a less welcoming one.
And Travel Weekly isn't the only media outlet to have noticed the collective impact of these policies on the industry's health. A recent New York Times article posed the question, "How Much More Can the U.S. Travel Industry Take?" A Fortune headline stated that "U.S. businesses are getting throttled by the drop in tourism from Canada."
Many of our travel advisor readers may not be immediately impacted by the downturn in inbound visitation - after all, most of their clients live here and go abroad. But they do have concerns about how their clients will be treated overseas and any impact on the industry that supports more than 15 million American jobs and is also the nation's largest single service export.
A healthy domestic travel industry means that travel suppliers who operate here and abroad are stronger. And a strengthened U.S. economy translates into more Americans with the means to take vacations.
I'm honored to be given the opportunity and responsibility that this role entails. I look forward to hearing from you, our readers, on the issues that matter to you.