"Completely Unacceptable": US Improves Visa Wait Times For Indians
The US travel industry isn't expected to recover to 2019 levels until 2025. Those two additional years will translate into "billions of dollars of lost spending, of lost jobs," says Geoff Freeman, US Travel's chief executive officer.
The major tourism markets throughout the world have seen a rapid rebound in tourism. In 2022, Spain regained 86% of its pre-pandemic tourist numbers, and this year's arrivals are already up 28% from levels in 2019.According to Atout France, a government tourism body, France is closely behind with year-to-date international visitor numbers being just 3% lower than they were prior to the Covid-19pandemic and their spending at record levels.
On the other hand, the US is lagging behind.
The US Travel Association's June 2023 monthly report shows that spending is also slowing while international tourist arrivals are still 26% below pre-pandemic levels.International visitor expenditure in the US reached $99 billion at the end of 2022, which is just over 50% of where it was in 2019.That contrasts sharply with 2019, when the US welcomed 79.4 million tourists and they spent $181 billion.
Geoff Freeman, the CEO of US Travel, says, "The lag is very significant, and we are very concerned." "We anticipate losing about 2.6 million foreign visitors and $7 billion less in spending this year alone."
It won't be until 2025 that the US travel sector is predicted to return to 2019 levels. The result of those two extra years will be "billions of dollars of lost spending, of lost jobs," according to Freeman.
The US is also experiencing a multiyear travel deficit for the first time in history because Americans are spending more money traveling overseas than foreign visitors are spending here.
Bureaucracy and delays
The biggest barrier is still the State Department's slow processing of US visas.According to US Travel, the average wait period for a visa for first-time applicants from major markets who do not qualify for a visa waiver was still above 400 days as of the beginning of July.43% of all international inbound travel in 2019 was made up of those who needed visas to enter the US.
According to Freeman, "Our wait times are wholly unacceptable and are deterring visitors from coming here."He continues that advances have been made with applicants from Brazil and India since the administration has been willing to recognise the issue.
In a statement sent by email, a spokesman for the State Department said that the organization was "rapidly reducing visitor visa examination wait times worldwide.Globally, we granted 19.4% more nonimmigrant visas in the first nine months of fiscal year 2023 (through June 2023) than we did in the same time frame during budget year 2019.
According to the spokesperson, the average wait time for visitor visa interviews as of July 1 was about three months, down from 120 days in October. The spokesperson also stated that by the end of 2023, additional officers traveling abroad should match the State Department's pre-pandemic staffing levels globally.
Competing tourist destinations like Canada, the UK, and the EU are becoming more aggressive in their tourism promotion efforts and increasing their accessibility to top US markets like Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Israel, and Venezuela. For instance, citizens of those nations are exempt from visa requirements for travel to the EU, whereas the UK has eliminated visa requirements for countries like Colombia and Peru.
In addition to visa wait times, one issue facing the US travel industry is that hotel rates have remained high even since travel resumed.The high cost of travel, a strong dollar, and inflation are deterring foreign tourists, as evidenced by the 2% decline in hotel demand in the US in May 2023, according to data from US Travel.
In addition, delays in clearing customs at airports and rising TSA wait times affect travelers. US Customs and Border Protection was contacted by Bloomberg, but a response wasn't received in time for the article to be published.
According to Freeman of US Travel, "on and on, across the board, we show that we don't prioritize travel the way that other markets do." "We Americans have taken it for granted for far too long," she said.
Bureaucracy discourages not only pleasure travelers but also corporate travelers. According to trade show exhibitors, attendance is down 20%, says Freeman, who explicitly attributes the decline to a dearth of international visitors. With respective numbers currently at just 37% and 37% of 2019 levels, visitors from China and Japan, two of America's top markets for inbound trips, have been hesitant to return to the US.
A political reality
Domestic tourism is still a bright feature; leisure travel by Americans increased by 3% over 2019 levels in the first half of 2023 and is expected to stabilize at current levels this year. However, it seems that the US is in for a bigger reckoning, one that is having an impact on the travel plans of both domestic and foreign business travelers.
According to Jack Ezon, CEO of the upscale boutique company Embark Beyond, "there is a growing perception outside the USA that the country is no longer safe." Potential visitors are frightened by rising crime rates, urban homelessness, and news of mass shootings, the survey continues.
According to the article, Ezon's clients are subject to a long list of restrictions that exclude states like Florida, Texas, and Tennessee (among others) because of their severe anti-LGBTQ or pro-abortion laws. Others want to avoid traveling to places that are too "liberal." We've never seen either of these before.
Stacy Ritter, CEO of Visit Lauderdale, shares concerns that politics are influencing decisions to book events in her area. Visit Lauderdale promotes tourism in the south of Florida, from Miami-Dade to Palm Beach counties.
Visit Lauderdale received 10 cancellations from group business events with attendance of 500 to 10,000 people between May and July of this year. The events were scheduled for late 2023, 2024, and 2026. According to the organization, the cancellations have already resulted in a loss of more than 15,000 reservations for accommodation nights.
"This is the first time I've noticed a gathering for political purposes in such a short period of time. That has an economic impact of more than $20 million, claims Ritter.
Meeting organizers blame politics for the cancellation of events in Florida hotspots like Fort Lauderdale. Joe Raedle/Getty Images is the photographer.
Tom Joyner, a radio personality, hosts the Rivals conference, which honors current and former students and faculty from historically Black institutions and universities. This year, it was supposed to happen in Fort Lauderdale, however on July 7, it was postponed. According to Ritter, it would have brought 10,000 visitors to Broward County during the three-day Labor Day holiday.
The American Specialty Toy Retail Association, based in Chicago, originally intended to hold a conference in Fort Lauderdale in 2026 but decided against it due to the "unfriendly political environment in Florida."The group is currently thinking about Milwaukee.
Event bookings demand longer lead times and are challenging to reschedule, so a delay now could have a much bigger impact later.
As Ritter notes, cancellations started to trickle in during April 2022, following the passing in Florida of the first so-called Don't Say Gay rule. "We now know that there are meeting and conference planners which aren't even sending requests for proposals to any of us in Florida," she says.
She claims that the exact phrases used by the meeting organizers for Humana, the Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine, and the American Crafts Spirits Association were "Florida is out now due to politics" or "Florida is off the table right now due to policies."
"It's more a question of what are we not even able to bid for that we would normally have had the opportunity to bid for," she says, "at least for South Florida tourism. Even quantifying that is beyond me. The delays coincide with a currently ongoing, more than $1.5 billion convention center expansion project.
CEO Casandra Matej recently said that Visit Orlando has experienced a similar wave of postponed meetings.
Such worries were dismissed by Jeremy Redfern, press secretary for Governor Ron DeSantis. According to a statement he sent via email to Bloomberg, "as Governor DeSantis announced in May, Florida is experiencing record tourism, with Q1 2023 having the largest volume of visitors during a single quarter in recorded history."
The Sunshine State was ranked as the best component economy in the country by CNBC in July 2023, according to Redfern, who highlighted a recent assessment showing Florida is one of six rapidly expanding Southern states that contribute more to the national gross domestic product than the Northeast.
According to US Travel's Freeman, politics are less of a factor in the slow recovery of US travel than is inefficiency.
"I've heard the politics comments for a long time, going back to the George W. Bush administration," he claims. "However, the US continues to be the most sought-after destination, so you have to wonder: If they want to come, why aren't they coming? And I believe that has much less to do with politics than it does with the barriers that are being put in people's paths.
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