February 3, 2007
America's tourism marketing: A Blueprint to Discover America
America's tourism industry is in decline: "Overseas travel to the U.S. is down 17 percent since 2001, with business travel alone down 10 percent from 2004 to 2005, according to TIA."
"Among the major reasons why travelers are not coming to the U.S.: concerns about the U.S. visa process and perception of poor treatment at the point of entry."
The idea is to streamline the visa process, modernize ports of entry, and change negative perceptions about America. In my experience the first one is the big one. In downtown Seoul, people line up hours before the US embassy opens trying to get a visa. They wait on line all day and sometimes get a visa. I have friends who were refused.
Sometimes, there's no good reason for the refusal. For example after my wife and I got married we applied for a tourist visa for my Korean wife so she could meet my grandfathers who were too old to travel to Korea for the wedding. The guy in the US embassy in Rome was rude and stupid (a few days earlier he had told me that I couldn't get my passport extended but luckily his boss walked by and corrected his error). They denied my wife a tourist visa.
Anyway, for many people, getting a US visa is more trouble than its worth. You spend lots of time and money and you may come away empty handed for no good reason.
The second one seems OK to me flying into JFK regularly. I never see long lines for immigration and the guys in the booths seem friendly enough. When we go into the little office to have my wife's greencard checked out, it's often another story but most travelers never see those people. The third one seems easy enough. It's not going to be hard to convince people they want to visit New York, the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Hawaii, Boston, Chicago, etc.
Here's the article on the new tourism marketing plan.
Posted by James Trotta at February 3, 2007 7:30 AM | TrackBack
Sorry about your troubles, but I myself think it's worth it if we keep out even one terrorist.
Posted by: Melissa at February 13, 2007 5:34 PMHi Melissa. When you say it's worth it, are you referring to the visa process? I ask because I don't have any trouble with that (because I'm American). It's just that many would be tourists have trouble getting a visa and that's bad for the US tourism industry. I guess they're going to try to make it easier for regular tourists to get visas and keep it hard for the bad guys to get visas.
Posted by: James Trotta at February 16, 2007 10:11 PM