There is, to put it mildly, a frisson of anxiety being felt by those in charge of the US tourism industry given the less than encouraging figures released by the US Department of Commerce earlier this year.

While much of the country’s economy is booming, the picture for the travel industry is looking rather less rosy, which is not good news for a country increasingly reliant on tourism. Figures produced by the US Travel Association show that one in nine jobs in the United States is dependent on travel and tourism, an industry which generated nearly $160bn (£114bn) in tax revenue in 2016.

Thanks to a recovering world economy, global tourism is up and the US would have expected to prosper along with the rest of the world.

But that has not happened. The US’s share dropped from 13.6pc to 11.9pc between 2015 and 2017.