Travel Ban Could Cost US $18b

The revised US travel ban could hit the country's tourism industry upwards of $18 billion over the next few years, Reza Marashi, National Iranian American Council's research director, said in an interview on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street."

Marashi said the US government must balance its national security concerns with the economic and humanitarian costs of the travel ban.

"After 9/11, the tourism industry took a $600 billion hit and it will take another hit after the travel ban," he said.

The revised travel ban went into effect on Thursday night and covers Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. However, people with "close" family ties can enter the country: A parent, child, spouse, fiancee, son-in-law, daughter-in-law or sibling.

While Marashi argued that too many security measures keep flyers away, Patrick Surry, chief data scientist at Hopper, argued that flyers are kept away by too few security measures, because they are concerned about terrorism.

"We have already seen a pretty significant shift in terms of where Americans are looking to fly, a shift away from national destinations and more towards domestic ones," said Surry in an interview with "Squawk on the Street", CNBC reported.

"I think [this shift] is driven by these kinds of concerns about security risks, bad publicity that you're hearing from places all around the world with these kinds of terrorism incidents and so forth," he said.

Surry also added that a wider laptop ban could cause travelers to consider vacationing elsewhere or attend international business meetings via Skype rather than in person.

To avoid the costs associated with the ban, Marashi had three pieces of advice for the government: Explain the reasoning behind the ban and why certain countries are included while others are not, explain why previous administrations never took these drastic steps and minimize the economic hits to the US and other countries.

"We have to ... challenge the administration to explain why a handful of countries, Saudi Arabia and UAE, are not on the list," said Marashi.

"It's a haphazard application of a particular rule and until the details are fleshed out, it might be a bridge too far to take the steps when a variety of other measures have been in place since 9/11."