The travel industry thought 2025 couldn’t get much worse. Las Vegas and New York watched as millions of tourists vanished. Border towns from Washington to Maine felt the sting of Canadian boycotts triggered by trade war tensions and President Donald Trump’s flippant comments about turning our longtime ally into the “51st state.”
But then, just days before the holiday rush, the Trump administration delivered another blow: a proposal that international visitors from visa-waiver countries would have to surrender five years of social media history and close family contacts just to step onto American soil.
“Travelers are already avoiding the United States. We are the only one of the top 25 countries for tourism to see a major decline in 2025,” travel expert and founder of Frommer’s guidebooks Pauline Frommer told MS NOW. “This feels, quite frankly, like an intentional act of sabotage by our government to destroy the travel industry.”
The new rule, proposed by Customs and Border Protection on Tuesday as a measure to protect national security interests and public safety, would affect millions of travelers from 42 countries, including close allies like Britain, France, Israel and Italy. Visitors would be required to provide five years of social media history, a decade of email addresses, and identifying information for immediate family.
“Nothing has changed on this front for those coming to the United States,” CBP spokesperson Trish Driscoll said. “This is not a final rule, it is simply the first step in starting a discussion to have new policy options to keep the American people safe.”
Already though, travel agents, guides and bloggers are strategizing about what to tell their clients. Tamara Elliott, founder of Global Guide, worries that if the proposal is approved, visa processing times will increase as administrators comb through information. This could lead to delays that have a ripple effect on the economy, she explained, resulting in lost revenue for agents and tour operators who adjust or cancel bookings.
Since 2016, sharing your social media with the U.S. government has been optional. The Trump administration did not appear to have consulted with industry groups ahead of announcing the rule that would make it mandatory, according to Clint Henderson, the managing editor of travel trade site The Points Guy.
The American travel industry supports nearly 20 million jobs, and agents say the real figure is likely higher when accounting for the jobs with secondary associations.
“Most travelers just want a smooth, straightforward holiday, not a deep audit of their online lives,” said Leigh Barnes, president of Intrepid Travelers, The Americas. “If this proposal goes through, we could see real flow-on effects for airlines, hotels, tour operators and the small businesses that depend on international visitors.”
Andrea Flores, a vice president at the immigration and criminal justice policy group FWD.us who worked at the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Council under Democratic administrations, has already asked friends and family outside of the country to be careful when traveling to the U.S.
She has questions about what the government will do once they have years’ worth of travelers’ personal data: “How will they store it? Where will they share it? Will they be sharing it with other national security agencies? Why will they be sharing it with them?”
Immigration advocates and civil liberties organizations say the anxiety is warranted.
Sophia Cope, a senior staff attorney on the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s civil liberties team, warned that for tourists and people with loved ones they hope to visit in the United States, this level of government surveillance will make them feel less free to express their beliefs, especially if they’re in opposition to the current administration. “It’s a real tragedy when people are disincentivized from doing that, and it not only affects the people who are the applicants, but also people in their social orbit, right? So maybe their friends or family or colleagues may themselves engage in self censorship to avoid doing anything that might implicate their loved ones.” Cope also pointed out that CBP has yet to clarify some basic administrative steps. Will travelers who’ve always kept their social media pages private be required to make them public in order to go see the Grand Canyon or a Broadway show? And for the American travelers who think this won’t impact them, Cameron Hewitt of Rick Steves’ Europe, an operator that focuses on outbound travel, cautioned that there is a history of European governments implementing reciprocal requirements when America changes its policies. “A Trump supporter might initially think this policy is a smart move,” he said. “But what happens if, down the road, their dream trip to Ireland or Italy gets scuttled just because they’ve shared and liked MAGA content online? Of course, they’d want their freedom of speech to not run the risk of affecting their travel options.” CBP will accept 60 days of public comment and feedback on the policy. But industry leaders say the damage may already be done by then, and 2025 may be remembered as a year that redefined not just who visits the United States but how the country is seen from abroad. Kyla Guilfoil contributed to this report.
Antonia Hylton is co-anchor of "The Weekend: Primetime" and an award-winning correspondent for MS NOW. Recommended
