U.S. Travel Chief Urges Government to Remove Barriers to International Inbound Tourism

While the U.S. travel industry continues to rebound from the pandemic slump, it will take more work—as well as sustained government action—to become “the most visited nation in the world,” U.S. Travel Association President and CEO Geoff Freeman said this week.

“Our goal should be nothing short of number one in terms of visitor arrivals, visitor spend, and visitor experience,” Freeman said at the association’s annual IPW convention in Los Angeles this week.

IPW, which connects U.S. travel suppliers with international tour operators and buyers, drives an estimated $5.5 billion in economic impact in future travel to the U.S. This year,  attendance rose 20% over 2023’s event, with 5,700 attendees from nearly 70 countries.  

However, as Freeman pointed out,  inbound international visits are only at 84% of pre-pandemic levels, with 67 million international arrivals in 2023, down from 79 million in 2019.

“We have serious problems on the international inbound travel side that we have to resolve,”  he said. “Some are outside our control, such as the strength of our dollar” which is making the U.S. a more expensive destination for many foreigners.

“But there’s a lot we can do on issues that we do control, like visa wait times, customs inefficiencies, and the challenges travelers have when trying to make connections and having to rescreen their bags when coming to the United States.”

In an interview with TMR, he expanded on the theme, sounding an alarm about yet another potential hurdle: a proposal pending in Congress that would put the brakes on the use of biometrics, such as facial scans, at airports.    

Under a proposed amendment to a massive FAA reauthorization bill,  TSA would be banned from using facial recognition technology for non-PreCheck passengers.

According to a U.S. Travel analysis, that could result in travelers waiting an additional 120 million hours in TSA lines each year,  because it could slow both the expedited and standard screening lanes.  

“If this amendment goes through, it stops innovation in its tracks. And it sets us back decades, in terms of our efforts to improve the travel process, particularly for those who are willing to give more information about themselves,” to get through security faster, he said.

But while the fate of that proposal is still in the balance—Congress was still debating the bill at press time, Freeman said he’s encouraged by some recent steps taken to ease other perennial problems, such as a backlog of visa applications in certain countries.  For example, wait times for those visiting from Brazil have been reduced drastically—from as much as 500 days down to just 21 days, he said. But prospective visitors from other countries are still waiting for relief; in Colombia, for example, visa processing can still take up to 600 days.

Another source of agita for international visitors is the cumbersome process of transferring from an international flight to a domestic connecting flight, which often entails a long wait to clear immigration and customs, followed by more time spent rechecking bags and clearing security. That could be avoided if connecting passengers could remain in a sterile zone. 

“What gives me some degree of optimism is that we’ve seen a desire to address this issue on the part of CBP (Customs and Border Protection) and it would make a massive difference to travelers,”  potentially reducing a three-hour layover to 45 minutes or an hour, he said.  A pilot program may launch soon at major international gateways such as Atlanta, according to reports.