Over the past 14 years, Brian Burgess has met people from nearly every nation while leading tours on Boston’s historic Freedom Trail.
But this summer, as the manager of Tours by Foot Boston, he’s seen far fewer foreign visitors. Last year, Burgess estimates nearly one-third of his customers came from abroad. This year, he says, he’s had only a handful of foreign clients. That means fewer tours and smaller groups.
“It’s hard to survive right now,” said Burgess, who has averaged one tour a day this summer, compared to two last year. “I’m literally living on my savings.”
While foreign visitors make up a fraction of overall travel to Massachusetts, people like Burgess are counting on their dollars. And he said other guides have noticed the drop as well.
Some local tourism leaders, elected officials and people who work in the industry say there are fewer foreigners because of President Trump’s threats to annex Canada, efforts to increase tariffs, bans on visitors from selected countries and efforts to strengthen border checks.
Burgess said the United States is “not the most welcoming place to be right now” so it’s not surprising that many travelers are choosing to go elsewhere.
Meet Boston, a tourism bureau for Greater Boston, recently downgraded its forecast from a 9% increase in foreign visitors this year to a 10% decrease. Meet Boston said the estimates were compiled by Tourism Economics using a variety of data.
If the prediction proves correct, Meet Boston spokesman Dave O’Donnell said it would halt three straight years of rising international numbers coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The great tragedy of 2025 so far is that it was supposed to be the year where we finally fully recovered” and surpassed numbers for 2019, O’Donnell said.
O’Donnell attributed much of the decline in international tourism to Canada — normally the top source of foreign tourists to Greater Boston. Meet Boston expects 621,000 visitors from Canada this year, down one-fourth from 2024.
PT Tours in New Brunswick, Canada, said it canceled all eight bus trips it planned for the United States this year, including a long weekend in Boston in May and a shopping excursion to New Hampshire set for October. The Boston trip, with room for more than 50 people, would have included a boat ride around the harbor and visits to Fenway Park, Faneuil Hall and the Public Garden.
Phyllis LeBlanc, one of the owners of PT Tours, said they nixed the trips partly because of anger in Canada at the U.S. over the increased tariffs and Trump’s threat to make Canada the 51st state. She said many Canadians are avoiding travel to the U.S. or the purchase of American goods.
“It’s too bad because we used to be very friendly,” LeBlanc said.
She also said they canceled the trips because of the weak Canadian dollar and concerns over stricter immigration controls.
LeBlanc said she worried that some of her buses could be delayed by U.S. immigration authorities for hours at the border, throwing off their schedule, or worse, she feared some passengers might not be allowed to enter the country at all.
“We don’t know what would happen at the border crossing,” LeBlanc said. “I’m not going to take that chance.”
Gov. Maura Healey has also expressed concerns about the decline in Canadian tourism, which she blamed on Trump.
“Tourism is a huge problem economically,” Healey said in a June interview with MSNBC. “We’re looking at lost jobs as servers and staff get laid off because they’re not bringing in what they did.”
She made the comments when she hosted a summit with Canadian premiers and governors from the northeast.
So far, the impact on local businesses and nonprofits in Massachusetts has been uneven.
Museum of Fine Arts in Boston recorded 11% fewer international visitors in the fiscal year ending in June, according to its spokeswoman Olga Khvan.
But several blocks away, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum hasn’t seen a decline, said spokeswoman Cassandra Martinez. She said only a small percentage of its visitors are international tourists.
Foreign tourists historically account for about 10% of visitors and 15% of tourist spending in the Boston area, O’Donnell said. He said domestic tourism has been steadier this year than foreign tourism, but he doesn’t have numbers yet.
The full impact of any decline in international tourism will take time, he said, because people typically plan in advance for those types of trips.
O’Donnell said he’s already preparing for next year, when Massachusetts hosts seven World Cup matches, welcomes a gathering of tall ships and celebrates the 250th anniversary of the country’s birth. He said they are all opportunities to market Boston to the rest of the world.
“The international visitor needs to be part of that success,” he said. “So if we’re still in a situation next spring where the U.S. reputation is precarious in a lot of our key international markets, then that’s going to be concerning.”
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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