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A downturn in international travel to the U.S. may last beyond summer, experts warn
(abcnews.go.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
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People were vacationing in Japan and Germany practically before the smoke cleared. There's a few very wild stories of Americans trying to vacation in Afghanistan and Iraq shortly after the US invaded. Trumpism is a bulwark against a tidal wave of foreigners looking to come to America to party. It will be as effective, long term, as his Wall was in keeping out migrant labor.
FFS, North Korea has a tour guide program - practically by way of attrition. Simply easier for them to formalize the process rather than deal with all the adventure seeking lunatics trying to get smuggled in through the back country.
Las Vegas isn't any more stained than Dubai or Cairo. The only difference is that the UAE and the Egypt Dictatorship actively court tourists, while the current American DHS seems hell bent on keeping wealthy tourists out.
The North Korean tour program is much more a propoganda play than anything to with them acknowledging that people are going to try to sneak in anyway. It very intentionally only shows tourists the most inoffensive parts of the country.
You could just as easily say that of any city sponsored tour of Washington DC (or, really, any major municipality with a budget for self-promotion). FFS, that's the core of Israeli Birthright trips.
The difference is that North Koreans generally didn't want any kind of tourism for decades. They were openly hostile to it in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Modern touring of Pyongyang is a concession to deal with the huge number of foreigners desperately curious to see inside. You're not visiting because the NK government has tricked you into coming to visit. You're visiting because you're captivated by all the crazy stories you've heard from SK, Japan, and the US, and you want to evaluate them firsthand.
Coming from a country in which we are regularly told everyone in North Korea is on the verge of starving to death at any given moment, the idea that you can walk through the country and not see lines of emaciated homeless children stretching to the horizon is perception-shattering.
Naturally, the US response is to insist our propaganda is true and the Koreans are just trying to trick you into believing otherwise. Even being on the ground and staring at crowds of people living normal lives isn't enough to shake some people's convictions. And that leads the more manic folks to try and sneak off, to hassle locals, and to shake them down until they reveal the horrifying truth you've been told is just on the other side of what you've been told is a crude Potemkin display.
What really gets me is the YouTube videographiers who have to literally walk up to storefront and push on the walls to prove they're not cardboard, to sample the food to prove its not all a wax display, and to grill locals to prove they aren't actors. Even then, the comments sections are full of people shouting "Fake! Fake! Fake!"
That whole surreal stubborn disbelief - that North Korea is real and not just an elaborate Kubrick contrived sound stage - is a big part of what brings in thousands of tourists every year to see a country that's... kinda boring on any close inspection.
Wow, talk about bullshit propaganda. Yeah, go to NK and try and venture away from the “allowed” areas or take video of things you aren’t explicitly show and see what happens. NK visits are ALL propaganda.
you mean like all those youTube videos where literally nothing happens?
Go to DC and try it. Tell ICE I said "Eat Shit, while they've got boots on your neck.
The difference between a tour of DC and a tour of Pyongyang is that you are allowed to just leave the city and go where ever you want in the US, so long as access isn't restricted because it's a literal military base. Thing's aren't great everywhere in the US, just as with every country, but at least the US doesn't have a state censorship machine preventing people from talking about the less well off people (well, not yet anyway).
Tell that to the DC paramilitary currently snatching people off the streets.
:-|
"I have to admit, I'm always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up," the CIA agent says.
"Thank you," the KGB says. "We do our best but truly, it's nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them."
The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. "Thank you friend, but you must be confused... There's no propaganda in America."
Most countries are kinda boring on close inspection.
There's a big difference between adventure seekers, and regular tourists. The difference isn't the existence of tourists because sure, there will always be tourists coming to America - the difference is the number of tourists.
Mostly by degrees. But piping your adventure seekers through a managed tour program tends to curb the number of people who die trying to scale a mountain the wrong time of year with no search and rescue on hand.
The US does a great job of heavily subsidizing its tourist industry, making a vacation to somewhere like Vegas or Miami or Lower Manhattan far cheaper than it has any right to be.
It's difficult to subsidize vacations to Vegas or Miami enough to offset the risk of being stuffed in a holding cell at the border.