To account for tourist visits (arrivals) to the United States, TI uses only select sections of the INS temporary immigrant data to reflect tourist visits. In the distilling process, TI complies as closely as possible with the globally accepted international tourism definitions and classifications of an international tourist visitor. A tourist visitor to the United States constitutes a person traveling to the U.S. for one or more nights for a period not exceeding twelve months and who is traveling for pleasure, business or study. All visitors are primarily recognized by residency rather than citizenship. In order to comply with this global standard, TI processes by residency and includes the following visa classifications from the INS I-94 form raw data for all overseas countries and Mexican (Mexican visitors to U.S. interior only) tourist visitor counts:

• B-1 visa holders business F-1 visa holders students
• B-2 visa holders pleasure F-2 visa holders family members of students
• M-1 visa holders - students WB - visa waiver - business
• M-2 visa holders - students WT - visa waiver - pleasure

Other "non-tourist" visitor counts reported in the INS I-94 form data, such as transiting visitors en route to another country destination and official diplomats, are excluded from the Summary report because they are not by definition considered as an international tourist visitor to the United States.

Trend Line Analysis

A complex federal and private industry network endeavors to produce this report. Over time several system changes occurred due to this complex process of collecting, processing and reporting the tourist visitor arrivals data for the US. System changes to select data make some elements of this data base incompatible with arrival statistics produced and reported in prior years. When using this report in a time series the user should pay close attention to past report introductions to assess comparability issues. Additionally, many official country designations change over time, which may effect time series analysis.

Mexican tourist arrivals in the Summary reflect only those Mexican visitors who fill out the INS Form I-94. Essentially this is limited to those visiting the U.S. interior, beyond the 40 kilometer (25 miles) U.S. border zone. This encompasses all air travelers to the United States. Mexican visitors who stay within the border zone and travel with border crossing permits (INS Form SW-444) are not included in these tabulations. They were included in INS visitor counts before 1983. Because of this change, it is estimated that the Mexican arrivals count in this report only represents about 15 - 20% of the total visitation from Mexico.

TI relies on Banco de Mexico to report total Mexican arrivals on an annual basis as reported in the Abstract of International Travel To and From the United States and on the web site TInet http://tinet.ita.doc.gov

Data on Canadian arrivals are derived from Statistics Canada's International Travel Survey. TI uses Statistic Canada's data as the official tourist visitor counts. These data reflect the number of Canadian residents visiting the United States overnight or longer. The Canadian arrival data are subject to quarterly and yearly revisions. Contact Tourism Industries, Tourism Development Group, to obtain revised Canadian monthly and total arrivals data.

Starting in 1996, TI began reporting China PRC and Hong Kong as one country due to the re-unification. However, TI will continue to sub-set Hong Kong as long as Hong Kong residency data are reported by INS. The Hong Kong data should be considered as an estimate only in all years subsequent to 1996.