Foreigners see dream vacation in the U.S.

When Steve Meissner of Berlin bought a 1956 butter-yellow Cadillac online, he could have had it shipped from Arizona to Germany.

Instead, he flew to the U.S. with a buddy, hopped in the Caddy and began a road trip that included the Grand Canyon; Bryce Canyon and Zion national parks in Utah; Las Vegas; and Los Angeles.

“This is adventure. This is cruising,” Meissner said recently as he shopped at a roadside stand on the popular South Rim of the Grand Canyon. “Driving west with a ’56 Cadillac -- that’s a dream.”

Like an increasing number of foreign travelers to the U.S., Meissner couldn’t resist taking advantage of the weak dollar and gas prices here.

“Our Euro is so up, and gas [in the U.S.] is dirt-cheap,” said the 45-year-old wedding photographer, who plans to ship the car to Germany after his adventure. “We pay $8 a gallon in Germany, so we enjoy pumping gas at three bucks a gallon.”

The number of international visitors to the United States increased to more than 56.7 million in 2007, an 11.1% increase over the previous year, according to the Commerce Department. Visitors from Canada, Mexico, Britain, Japan and Germany top the list.

Although Grand Canyon National Park officials don’t track visitors’ nationalities, they say they’ve noticed a sharp increase in international tourists in the last year or so and estimate that foreigners now make up about 40% of all visitors to the massive gorge.

“Every other group is speaking a different language,” Grand Canyon Supt. Steve Martin said. “You have Brits, people from Australia and New Zealand and India and a number of Asian countries, and Hispanics. It’s just incredible.”

Martin said domestic visitation to the canyon was probably constant. Overall visitation increased to more than 4.4 million people in 2007, a 3.1% increase from the previous year.

That reflects a greater number of visitors to national parks across the U.S. The national park system recorded more than 275 million tourists last year, a 1% increase over 2006.

The large, iconic national parks in the West, including Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone and Yosemite, saw some of the largest increases, while others, including Hawaii Volcanoes and Mt. Rainier in Washington, saw large drops.

Park Service spokesman Jeffrey Olson said it was difficult to explain the trends, but he attributed some of the increases to pent-up desire.

“People just love those Western parks,” he said. “Maybe they hadn’t been to see Yosemite for three, four or five years or so, and the guy just says, ‘Marge, we have to go to Yosemite this year,’ and they do.”

Olson also suspects foreign travelers are boosting the numbers.

“The Canadian dollar is much stronger, the Euro is much stronger, and that translates into good travel deals in the United States for Europeans and Canadians,” he said. “If people overseas had postponed a trip to the United States for a couple years or so, the strong Euro was probably a nice incentive to make that trip” now.

John and Christine Rickard of Britain’s Isle of Wight recently took advantage of the U.S. economy, taking a three-week holiday to the Western United States that included stops at the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Las Vegas and San Diego.

“You’re really feeling the pinch at the moment,” Christine Rickard, 66, said with a wink at one of the Grand Canyon’s stunning overlooks.

“We just had a cup of hot chocolate and it was half of what we would have paid in England,” said John Rickard, 68. “It’s very worthwhile coming here in the present circumstances.”

Although visits to the U.S. are up overall, the Washington, D.C.-based Travel Industry Assn. points out that Canadians and Mexicans account for many of them. Commerce Department figures show the number of overseas visitors is still about 2 million below what it was before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“With the dollar at an all-time low, this is a phenomenal bargain,” said Travel Industry Assn. President and Chief Executive Roger Dow. “We’re not realizing the numbers we should. We certainly have a long way to go.”

Tom Sargent, manager of the Desert View General Store on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, isn’t complaining.

“We’re really happy to have the foreign visitors,” he said. “Without them, we’d be up a creek.”