Donald Trump’s Presidential election win has apparently caused Muslim travellers to lose their appetite for a trip to the US.
Flight search platform CheapFlightsFinder.com reports US flight searches from the Arab world have plunged since the election.
The company says searches for US flights are down by 70% in the two weeks since the election, compared to October 2016.
In contrast, two of the world’s biggest Halal travel destinations – Turkey and Malaysia – have seen big increases in air fare searches.
Searches also jumped for flights to the UK, the company said.
"We obviously can’t speak to each traveller’s reasoning for searching flights to a particular country, but we can say for certain what the data is showing, which is that in the last two weeks, the vast majority of Muslim travellers appear to have decided against flying to the United States," CheapFlightsFinder CEO Shahab Siddiqui said in a statement.
"Is there a correlation to Donald Trump being elected president? The numbers seem to suggest that."
Trump’s election campaign was anchored on his anti-Muslim and hardline immigration stance but he has so far not yet outlined if, or how, this will be translate into real policy.
Siddiqui said ‘the US travel industry could be in for a bit of a depression in the weeks and months to come’ due to this uncertainty.
