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.”
WINNIPEG – The federal New Democrats have kept a longtime stronghold in the Elmwood-Transcona riding in Winnipeg.
The NDP’s Leila Dance won a close battle over Conservative candidate Colin Reynolds, and says the community has spoken in favour of priorities such as health care and the cost of living.
Elmwood-Transcona has elected a New Democrat in every election except one since the riding was formed in 1988.
The seat became open after three-term member of Parliament Daniel Blaikie resigned in March to take a job with the Manitoba government.
A political analyst the NDP is likely relieved to have kept the seat in what has been one of their strongest urban areas.
Christopher Adams, an adjunct professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba, says NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh worked hard to keep the seat in a tight race.
“He made a number of visits to Winnipeg, so if they had lost this riding it would have been disastrous for the NDP,” Adams said.
The strong Conservative showing should put wind in that party’s sails, Adams added, as their percentage of the popular vote in Elmwood-Transcona jumped sharply from the 2021 election.
“Even though the Conservatives lost this (byelection), they should walk away from it feeling pretty good.”
Dance told reporters Monday night she wants to focus on issues such as the cost of living while working in Ottawa.
“We used to be able to buy a cart of groceries for a hundred dollars and now it’s two small bags. That is something that will affect everyone in this riding,” Dance said.
Liberal candidate Ian MacIntyre placed a distant third,
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau say the Liberals have “all sorts of reflections” to make after losing a second stronghold in a byelection in Montreal Monday night.
His comments come as the Liberal cabinet gathers for its first regularly scheduled meeting of the fall sitting of Parliament, which began Monday.
Trudeau’s Liberals were hopeful they could retain the Montreal riding of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, but those hopes were dashed after the Bloc Québécois won it in an extremely tight three-way race with the NDP.
Louis-Philippe Sauvé, an administrator at the Institute for Research in Contemporary Economics, beat Liberal candidate Laura Palestini by less than 250 votes. The NDP finished about 600 votes back of the winner.
It is the second time in three months that Trudeau’s party lost a stronghold in a byelection. In June, the Conservatives defeated the Liberals narrowly in Toronto-St. Paul’s.
The Liberals won every seat in Toronto and almost every seat on the Island of Montreal in the last election, and losing a seat in both places has laid bare just how low the party has fallen in the polls.
“Obviously, it would have been nicer to be able to win and hold (the Montreal riding), but there’s more work to do and we’re going to stay focused on doing it,” Trudeau told reporters ahead of this morning’s cabinet meeting.
When asked what went wrong for his party, Trudeau responded “I think there’s all sorts of reflections to take on that.”
In French, he would not say if this result puts his leadership in question, instead saying his team has lots of work to do.
Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet will hold a press conference this morning, but has already said the results are significant for his party.
“The victory is historic and all of Quebec will speak with a stronger voice in Ottawa,” Blanchet wrote on X, shortly after the winner was declared.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and his party had hoped to ride to a win in Montreal on the popularity of their candidate, city councillor Craig Sauvé, and use it to further their goal of replacing the Liberals as the chief alternative to the Conservatives.
The NDP did hold on to a seat in Winnipeg in a tight race with the Conservatives, but the results in Elmwood-Transcona Monday were far tighter than in the last several elections. NDP candidate Leila Dance defeated Conservative Colin Reynolds by about 1,200 votes.
Singh called it a “big victory.”
“Our movement is growing — and we’re going to keep working for Canadians and building that movement to stop Conservative cuts before they start,” he said on social media.
“Big corporations have had their governments. It’s the people’s time.”
New Democrats recently pulled out of their political pact with the government in a bid to distance themselves from the Liberals, making the prospects of a snap election far more likely.
Trudeau attempted to calm his caucus at their fall retreat in Nanaimo, B.C, last week, and brought former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney on as an economic adviser in a bid to shore up some credibility with voters.
The latest byelection loss will put more pressure on him as leader, with many polls suggesting voter anger is more directed at Trudeau himself than at Liberal policies.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
The New Democrats have declared a federal byelection victory in their Winnipeg stronghold riding of Elmwood—Transcona.
The NDP candidate Leila Dance told supporters in a tearful speech that even though the final results weren’t in, she expected she would see them in Ottawa.
With several polls still to be counted, Conservative candidate Colin Reynolds conceded defeat and told his volunteers that they should be proud of what the Conservatives accomplished in the campaign.
Political watchers had a keen eye on the results to see if the Tories could sway traditionally NDP voters on issues related to labour and affordability.
Meanwhile in the byelection race in the Montreal riding of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun the NDP, Liberals and Bloc Québécois remained locked in an extremely tight three-way race as the results trickled in slowly.
The Liberal stronghold riding had a record 91 names on the ballot, and the results aren’t expected until the early hours of the morning.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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