Los Angeles, California — The United States has “serious problems” when it comes to inbound international travel that must be resolved if the country is to regain its competitive advantage.
This is the assessment of the US Travel Association and its leader Geoff Freeman, president and CEO of the organization.
Freeman offered his sobering opinion on the problems plaguing inbound travel to the United States during a press conference today in Los Angeles, California, where a travel industry convention is taking place.
“The United States continues to be the most desired nation in the world to visit, but at the end of 2019 we had 79 million international visitors and by 2023 we had 67 million international visitors,” Freeman told media gathered for the IPW 2024 convention “That’s just 84 percent of pre-pandemic levels.”
“When you look at travel as an export – before the pandemic we had 12 billion [person] travel trade surplus. At the end of last year, we had around 50 billion [person] travel trade deficit,” Freeman added.
There are several challenges the United States currently faces when it comes to attracting international visitors and significantly increasing visitor numbers, Freeman said. And some of these challenges are within the country’s ability to resolve, while others are not.
There is not much that can be done, for example, regarding the strength of the US dollar, which makes this country very expensive to visit from many other parts of the world. Likewise, there is not much that US authorities can do about the current bans surrounding flights over Russian airspace, which pose a major obstacle to airlines arriving in this country from China.
However, visa wait times continue to be a significant obstacle for international visitors — and that’s a problem that U.S. authorities can — and should — be able to resolve, Freeman said.
“As for the visa, I checked this morning: if you are Colombian and want to come to the US, the wait time is over 600 days to get an interview at a US consulate,” Freeman said. “If you are in Mexico, the wait time is over 800 days.”
On the other hand, for visitors to India, the waiting period for visa interviews has recently been reduced to a slightly more reasonable 150 to 200 days. Likewise, wait times for those visiting Brazil have been drastically reduced – from what was previously 500 days to just 21 days, according to the US Travel Association.
“This shows us that it can be done. When the State Department uses its ingenuity, is creative and puts resources in the right places – this problem can be solved,” Freeman explained. “But this has been happening for a long time. This needs to be resolved now.”
30 day visa challenge
In a bold move to help push the needle and resolve the visa issue, Freeman said the US Travel Association has issued a challenge to the Biden administration. The organization asks the administration to set a target of 30 days or less to process all visas at any consulate in the world.
If the U.S. doesn’t heed that call, Freeman predicts the country will continue to lose market share to other destinations. In fact, Freeman says authorities in other countries are actively looking at source markets where U.S. visa wait times are longest and rolling out their own welcome mats for those visitors in order to lure away from this country.
“Whether it’s Canada, the United Kingdom or Turkey – other countries around the world are taking steps to attract travelers away from the United States,” Freeman said. “They are looking at countries where we have long wait times for visas and are allowing those travelers to come in [to their countries] visa-free.”
During a one-on-one interview with TravelPulse following the press conference, Freeman elaborated on this point.
Canada, he said, recently added about 14 countries to its list of source markets where travelers can visit without a visa. All 14 countries that Canada added to its visa-exempt list were countries whose citizens are currently required to have a visa to enter the United States and are countries that currently face excessive wait times for U.S. visas.
Likewise, the United Kingdom recently made substantial changes to waive the visa requirement for Brazilians wishing to visit that country. Until recently, Brazil was a country whose citizens faced excessive wait times (500 days) to get a visa to the United States, Freeman told TravelPulse.
“So yes, [other countries] we know what’s happening and we’re being strategic about it,” Freeman said. “There is real coordination at the top levels of their governments that we don’t have in the United States.”
“It’s these types of measures that will rob U.S. travelers,” Freeman said.
Keven McAleenan, Patty Cogswell and US Travel Association President Geoff Freeman discuss inbound tourism at the IPW 2024 press conference
To help solve some of the country’s inbound tourism challenges, the US Travel Association earlier this year convened a panel of experts who are focused on creating safe and seamless travel to the United States.
The committee is made up of high-ranking experts such as a former TSA administrator as well as an individual who created the TSA PreCheck program. There are also several individuals from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of State. The commission even includes an expert who was the former head of London Heathrow Airport, Freeman told TravelPulse.
The focus of the committee will be to present ideas that the US government can adopt to make the country more competitive and “ensure that the US gets its share of international travelers”.
Members of that committee (two of whom were present at today’s press conference to talk about the challenges plaguing the inbound travel process) are currently traveling the country assessing the situation at airports from coast to coast with the aim of identifying how the country can be more competitive.
Freeman said during the TravelPulse interview that he expects the committee to make some initial recommendations on steps that can be taken to improve inbound travel by the second half of this year.
“In our experience, that’s what’s needed,” Freeman said. “If you want to bring about change in the federal government, you often have to hand them change on a silver platter. If you put it on a silver platter and make it easy for them, they will embrace it.”
For the latest travel news, updates and deals, subscribe to the TravelPulse daily newsletter.
Topics in this article to explore
