Bureaucratic hurdles persist for international travelers—and in some states, politics is exacerbating problems.
(Bloomberg) — Tourism has bounced back furiously in the world’s major tourism markets. Spain recovered 86% of its pre-pandemic tourist arrivals in 2022, and arrivals this year already show a 28% increase over 2019 levels. France follows closely with year-to-date international visitors numbering just 3% less than before the Covid-19 pandemic and their spending at record levels, according to Atout France, a government tourism agency.
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The US, on the other hand, is falling behind.
International tourist arrivals remain at 26% below pre-pandemic levels, according to a June 2023 monthly report from the US Travel Association, with spending slower, too. At the close of 2022, international visitor spending in the US was at $99 billion, just over 50% of where it stood in 2019. That’s a far cry from 2019, when the US received 79.4 million visitors, who spent $181 billion.
“The lag is very significant, and we are very concerned,” says Geoff Freeman, US Travel’s chief executive officer. “We estimate that this year alone we’re going to lose about 2.6 million international visitors and $7 billion less in spending.”
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 Freeman.
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For the first time in history, the US is also running a multiyear travel deficit: Americans are spending more money abroad on their travels than international tourists are spending in the US.
Bureaucracy and delays
The State Department’s US visa processing delays continue at the top of the obstacle list. As of early July, visa wait times remained above 400 days for first-time applicants from top markets that do not qualify for visa waivers, according to US Travel. In 2019, travelers requiring visas to enter the US made up 43% of all inbound international travel.
“Our wait times are completely unacceptable, and they are discouraging travelers from coming here,” says Freeman. The government has been willing to acknowledge the problem, he adds, and improvements have been made with applicants from India and Brazil.
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A State Department spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the agency was “quickly lowering visitor visa interview wait times worldwide. In the first nine months of fiscal year 2023 (through June 2023), globally we issued 19.4% more nonimmigrant visas than we did during the same period in fiscal year 2019.”
The median global interview appointment waiting time for visitor visas as of July 1 was approximately three months, down about a third from 120 days in October, said the spokesperson, who added that additional officers heading overseas should match the State Department’s global pre-pandemic staffing by the end of 2023.
Meanwhile, destination rivals including Canada, the UK and the EU are growing more aggressive in soliciting tourism and making themselves more accessible to such top US markets as Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Israel and Venezuela. Citizens from those countries can travel visa-free to the EU, for instance, while the UK has waived visa requirements for Colombia and Peru, among others.
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Beyond waiting times for visas, US travel industry woes include hotel rates that have remained high since travel recommenced. Those prices are deterring international travelers who are concerned with high travel costs, a strong dollar and inflation; hotel demand in the US dipped 2% in May 2023, data from US Travel shows.
Travelers are also dealing with delays getting through customs at airports and TSA wait times continue to increase. Bloomberg reached out to US Customs and Border Protection but did not receive a response in time for publication.
“On and on, across the board, we demonstrate that we don’t prioritize travel the way that other markets do,” says US Travel’s Freeman. “It is something that we have taken for granted here in the US for too long.”
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In addition to leisure tourists, business travelers are being deterred by bureaucracy. Trade show exhibitors confirm that attendance is down 20%, says Freeman, attributing the reduction directly to a paucity of foreign visitors. Travelers from Japan and from China, two of America’s top markets for incoming visits, have been slow to return to the US—with respective numbers currently at just 37% and 37% of 2019 levels.
A political reality
Domestic tourism remains the bright spot—leisure trips for Americans in the first half of 2023 showed a 3% increase over 2019 levels and are projected to settle at those levels this year. Still, the US appears to face a larger reckoning that’s affecting decisions by both domestic business visitors and international tourists.
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“There is a growing perception outside the USA that the country is no longer safe,” said Jack Ezon, founder of luxury boutique firm Embark Beyond, in his second-quarter Travel Trends Report. Higher crime rates, homelessness in cities and news of mass shootings are scaring potential visitors, the report adds.
The report further states that Ezon’s clients come “with a litany of restrictions removing places like Florida, Texas and Tennessee (among others) based on their draconian anti-LGBTQ or anti-abortion legislation. Others asking not to be exposed to destinations that are too ‘liberal.’ Both are something we’ve not ever seen before.”
Stacy Ritter, CEO at Visit Lauderdale, which promotes tourism in the south of Florida from Miami-Dade to Palm Beach counties, echoes concerns that politics are impacting decisions to book events in her destination.
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From May to July this year, Visit Lauderdale received 10 cancellations for late 2023, 2024 and 2026 of group business events ranging in size from 500 to more than 10,000 attendees. The cancellations have already caused a loss of more than 15,000 room night bookings, the agency says.
“This is the first time I’ve seen a grouping in such a short period of time for political reasons. That’s in excess of a $20 million economic impact,” says Ritter.
The Rivals conference, from radio personality Tom Joyner, celebrates students and alumni from historically Black colleges and universities. Set to take place in Fort Lauderdale this year, it was canceled on July 7. It would have brought 10,000 attendees over the three-day Labor Day weekend holiday to Broward County, Ritter says. The Chicago-based American Specialty Toy Retail Association was planning an event in Fort Lauderdale in 2026 but reconsidered, citing the “unfriendly political environment in Florida.” The group is now considering Milwaukee.
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Because event bookings require more lead time, they are difficult to reschedule, so a slowdown now can wield a far greater impact later.
“We now know that there are meeting and conference planners which aren’t even sending requests for proposals to any of us in Florida,” says Ritter, noting that cancellations began trickling in during April 2022, after passage in Florida of the first so-called Don’t Say Gay law.
Exact words from meeting planners for Humana, the Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine and American Crafts Spirits Association, she says, were: “Florida is out now due to politics” or “Florida is off the table right now due to policies.”
For South Florida tourism at least, she says, “it’s more a question of what are we not even able to bid for that we would normally have had an opportunity to bid for? I can’t even quantify that.” The setbacks come amid a more than $1.5 billion convention center expansion project that’s underway.
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Visit Orlando has suffered a similar round of cancelled meetings, CEO Casandra Matej confirmed in a recent report.
Jeremy Redfern, press secretary at the office of Governor Ron DeSantis, brushed aside such concerns. In an emailed statement to Bloomberg, he said that, “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.”
Redfern pointed to a recent report that Florida is one of six fast-growing Southern states contributing more to the national gross domestic product than the Northeast, and cited a July 2023 CNBC ranking of the Sunshine State as the nation’s best component economy.
For US Travel’s Freeman, the sluggish recovery of US travel has more to do with inefficiency than with politics.
“I’ve heard the politics comments for a long time, going back to the George W. Bush administration,” he says. “But the US is still the most desired nation to visit, so you have to ask yourself: If they want to come, why aren’t they coming? And I think that’s a lot less about politics and it is a lot more about obstacles that are being put people’s way.”
MONTREAL – A Quebec political party has voted to support one of its members facing backlash for saying that racialized people are regularly disparaged at the provincial legislature.
Québec solidaire members adopted an emergency resolution at the party’s convention late Sunday condemning the hate directed at Haroun Bouazzi, without endorsing his comments.
Bouazzi, who represents a Montreal riding, had told a community group that he hears comments every day at the legislature that portray North African, Muslim, Black or Indigenous people as the “other,” and that paint their cultures are dangerous or inferior.
Other political parties have said Bouazzi’s remarks labelled elected officials as racists, and the co-leaders of his own party had rebuked him for his “clumsy and exaggerated” comments.
Bouazzi, who has said he never intended to describe his colleagues as racist, thanked his party for their support and for their commitment to the fight against systemic racism.
Party co-spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois said after Sunday’s closed-door debate that he considers the matter to be closed.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 18, 2024.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Democrats who control both chambers of the Virginia legislature are hoping to make good on promises made on the campaign trail, including becoming the first Southern state to expand constitutional protections for abortion access.
The House Privileges and Elections Committee advanced three proposed constitutional amendments Wednesday, including a measure to protect reproductive rights. Its members also discussed measures to repeal a now-defunct state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and ways to revise Virginia’s process to restore voting rights for people who served time for felony crimes.
“This meeting was an important next step considering the moment in history we find ourselves in,” Democratic Del. Cia Price, the committee chair, said during a news conference. “We have urgent threats to our freedoms that could impact constituents in all of the districts we serve.”
The at-times raucous meeting will pave the way for the House and Senate to take up the resolutions early next year after lawmakers tabled the measures last January. Democrats previously said the move was standard practice, given that amendments are typically introduced in odd-numbered years. But Republican Minority Leader Todd Gilbert said Wednesday the committee should not have delved into the amendments before next year’s legislative session. He said the resolutions, particularly the abortion amendment, need further vetting.
“No one who is still serving remembers it being done in this way ever,” Gilbert said after the meeting. “Certainly not for something this important. This is as big and weighty an issue as it gets.”
The Democrats’ legislative lineup comes after Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, to the dismay of voting-rights advocates, rolled back a process to restore people’s civil rights after they completed sentences for felonies. Virginia is the only state that permanently bans anyone convicted of a felony from voting unless a governor restores their rights.
“This amendment creates a process that is bounded by transparent rules and criteria that will apply to everybody — it’s not left to the discretion of a single individual,” Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker, the patron of the voting rights resolution, which passed along party lines, said at the news conference.
Though Democrats have sparred with the governor over their legislative agenda, constitutional amendments put forth by lawmakers do not require his signature, allowing the Democrat-led House and Senate to bypass Youngkin’s blessing.
Instead, the General Assembly must pass proposed amendments twice in at least two years, with a legislative election sandwiched between each statehouse session. After that, the public can vote by referendum on the issues. The cumbersome process will likely hinge upon the success of all three amendments on Democrats’ ability to preserve their edge in the House and Senate, where they hold razor-thin majorities.
It’s not the first time lawmakers have attempted to champion the three amendments. Republicans in a House subcommittee killed a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights in 2022, a year after the measure passed in a Democrat-led House. The same subcommittee also struck down legislation supporting a constitutional amendment to repeal an amendment from 2006 banning marriage equality.
On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers voted 16-5 in favor of legislation protecting same-sex marriage, with four Republicans supporting the resolution.
“To say the least, voters enacted this (amendment) in 2006, and we have had 100,000 voters a year become of voting age since then,” said Del. Mark Sickles, who sponsored the amendment as one of the first openly gay men serving in the General Assembly. “Many people have changed their opinions of this as the years have passed.”
A constitutional amendment protecting abortion previously passed the Senate in 2023 but died in a Republican-led House. On Wednesday, the amendment passed on party lines.
If successful, the resolution proposed by House Majority Leader Charniele Herring would be part of a growing trend of reproductive rights-related ballot questions given to voters. Since 2022, 18 questions have gone before voters across the U.S., and they have sided with abortion rights advocates 14 times.
The voters have approved constitutional amendments ensuring the right to abortion until fetal viability in nine states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Ohio and Vermont. Voters also passed a right-to-abortion measure in Nevada in 2024, but it must be passed again in 2026 to be added to the state constitution.
As lawmakers debated the measure, roughly 18 members spoke. Mercedes Perkins, at 38 weeks pregnant, described the importance of women making decisions about their own bodies. Rhea Simon, another Virginia resident, anecdotally described how reproductive health care shaped her life.
Then all at once, more than 50 people lined up to speak against the abortion amendment.
“Let’s do the compassionate thing and care for mothers and all unborn children,” resident Sheila Furey said.
The audience gave a collective “Amen,” followed by a round of applause.
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Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
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Olivia Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative.
NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump says he will nominate anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, putting him in charge of a massive agency that oversees everything from drug, vaccine and food safety to medical research and the social safety net programs Medicare and Medicaid.
“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social site announcing the appointment. Kennedy, he said, would “Make America Great and Healthy Again!”
Kennedy, a former Democrat who ran as an independent in this year’s presidential race, abandoned his bid after striking a deal to give Trump his endorsement with a promise to have a role in health policy in the administration.
He and Trump have since become good friends, with Kennedy frequently receiving loud applause at Trump’s rallies.
The expected appointment was first reported by Politico Thursday.
A longtime vaccine skeptic, Kennedy is an attorney who has built a loyal following over several decades of people who admire his lawsuits against major pesticide and pharmaceutical companies. He has pushed for tighter regulations around the ingredients in foods.
With the Trump campaign, he worked to shore up support among young mothers in particular, with his message of making food healthier in the U.S., promising to model regulations imposed in Europe. In a nod to Trump’s original campaign slogan, he named the effort “Make America Healthy Again.”
It remains unclear how that will square with Trump’s history of deregulation of big industries, including food. Trump pushed for fewer inspections of the meat industry, for example.
Kennedy’s stance on vaccines has also made him a controversial figure among Democrats and some Republicans, raising question about his ability to get confirmed, even in a GOP-controlled Senate. Kennedy has espoused misinformation around the safety of vaccines, including pushing a totally discredited theory that childhood vaccines cause autism.
He also has said he would recommend removing fluoride from drinking water. The addition of the material has been cited as leading to improved dental health.
HHS has more than 80,000 employees across the country. It houses the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Medicare and Medicaid programs and the National Institutes of Health.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.
__ Seitz reported from Washington.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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