Effects of trump twiplomacy on visits to the united states by chinese pleasure seekers

A political leader’s twiplomacy, communication via Twitter with foreign leaders and publics, generates consequential impacts on global travel trends. In context, former president Trump (Trump) used twiplomacy more than any other political leader during his presidency especially toward China. Consequently, this study created a SARIMAX model to determine Trump’s twiplomacy influence on the number of Chinese pleasure travelers (TRAVELERS) visiting the United States (US). The data for the SARIMAX model included the number of TRAVELERS visiting the US and the number of Trump’s negative and positive China tweets during the first 37 months of his presidency. The last 11 months of his presidency created a different trendline because of COVID-19, which prevented the study from testing the developed model on this period. Findings revealed that, during his presidency, Trump actively tweeted more negative than positive messages about China by a 3 to 1 margin. Moreover, the SARIMAX model shows a reduction of more than 1,000 TRAVELERS visiting the US month-over-month of Trump's presidency. In addition, for every negative Trump’s tweet towards China, an additional 394 TRAVELERS avoided visiting the US, while each positive tweet inspired 921 of them to visit. In conclusion, this study found that Trump’s twiplomacy had an actual negative or positive effect on the flow of TRAVELERS to the US depending on the valence and frequency of Trump’s tweets. From an industry perspective, the development of a social media and political strategy will enhance or minimize the effect of political leader(s)’ twiplomacy.