Moves to reform US visa system to attract lost longhaul market
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Travel industry officials are urging the United States to reform its complicated visa system if it’s to attract lucrative tourism from countries like India, China and Brazil.A report in the Economic Times said travellers have criticised the US for long waits to get a visa and for a lack of access in some countries to U.S. consular offices. Some potential tourists have to travel across their country just for an interview for a visa, the report said.The U.S. Travel Association has announced a plan to help reform the visa process which it said could create 1.3 million U.S. jobs and add US$859 billion to the U.S. economy by 2020 through increased overseas tourism. “The challenge we have is the unnecessary, burdensome U.S. visa system,” USTA President Roger Dow was quoted saying.”It’s really self-imposed barriers that we put on ourselves as a country that have caused us to lose international travel and that have stymied international growth.” According to the report, USTA figures showed while travel is the largest U.S. industry export sector, the US has failed to keep pace with other parts of the world – such as Western Europe – as a travel destination in the past decade. It said global long-haul travel grew 140% in the past decade and projected to double again over the next decade. But only a fraction of that travel – and the billions of dollars in revenue it creates – went to the United States. Among the recommendations of the U.S. Travel Association are for the US State Department to hire more consular officers and reduce visa interview wait times to 10 days or less. It had also proposed expanding the number of countries in the visa waiver programme, which allows citizens of 36 nations to travel for up to 90 days without a visaU.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar was quoted saying that since the September 11 attacks on the US, the country has lost 20% of the international tourism market.”Obviously after 9/11 there were changes that had to be made to our security measures. Now we’ve made those changes and we have to look at how can we make this more efficient, still keeping the security in place.”
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