Tourism officials seek to make international travel to U.S. easier

By Amanda Finnegan

Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2010 | 2:05 a.m.

One of the most daunting challenges major international destinations like Las Vegas face in attracting overseas tourists is strict visa regulations, tourism officials said during the U.S. Travel Association’s annual conference at Caesars Palace on Tuesday.

Officials with the U.S. Travel Association and U.S. Department of Commerce said that in growing markets such as Brazil and China, tourists wanting to travel to the U.S. are forced to wait an average of 90 days or more to have an interview conducted at the American consulate for a tourist visa.

With only four consulates in Brazil and five in China, those trips can cost a family of four up to $1,000 just to be considered for a visa, tourism officials said.

That can discourage international leisure and business travelers from traveling to U.S. cities such as Las Vegas, said Rossi Ralenkotter, president and chief executive of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor Authority.

“We need to make it very easy for business people to be able to do business in our country,” Ralenkotter said. “We need to think about that part of the equation when we talk about international travel. From our standpoint, it is a big growth market for Las Vegas over the next five to seven years, and we are going to aggressively go after it.”

Ralenkotter, who is also the first vice chair of the U.S. Travel Association, said 14 percent of Las Vegas’ tourists come from international destinations, with about 70 percent of those travelers coming from Mexico, Canada and the United Kingdom.

He said the LVCVA hopes to increase international traveler to 20 percent of all Las Vegas tourists, which would add 40 percent more jobs in Las Vegas in five to seven years.

Those international travelers would help fill the 148,000 rooms Las Vegas already has and 3,000 more after the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas opens in December, Ralenkotter said.

International travel to the U.S. is expected increase by 9 percent, to 60 million people, in 2010, the U.S. Department of Commerce predicts. By 2015, the department predicts international arrivals will reach 83 million.

Still, tourism officials agreed that without a solution to long visa wait times in growing countries like Brazil, China and India, international travel to the U.S. could decline and other countries will scoop up those visitors.

“Can you imagine if you wanted to go to Brazil and you had to have an in-person interview just to be considered, and the only place you could go do it would be Seattle, Phoenix, Cleveland or Richmond?” said Jeff Freeman, vice president of public affairs for the U.S. Travel Association.

The public-private Corporation of Travel Promotion has been tasked with proposing alternatives to the in-person interview process to obtain a U.S. travel visa. The group, which is chaired by Las Vegas-based Diamond Resorts chief Stephen Cloobeck, was started after President Barack Obama signed U.S. Sen. Harry Reid’s Travel Promotion Act in March.

The organization is proposing three ways to increase inbound international travel: Visa waiver programs, visa video-conference interviews and better resource dedication. Currently, 36 countries have visa waiver programs, mainly in Europe. Tourism officials said the countries with visa waiver programs are those whose residents are traveling to U.S. cities.

But even if the visa waiver program is passed in other growing markets, there are still other challenges attracting international travelers, Ralenkotter said.

“We don’t have the lift coming into the United States to be able to handle the demand that could happen if the visa waiver program occurred in countries like China, Brazil and India,” Ralenkotter said. “We need to be concerned about the amount of domestic flights, but more important the amount of nonstop, international flights that come to the marketplace.”

Ralenkotter noted that Las Vegas just celebrated its first anniversary of nonstop flights from the United Kingdom with British Airways, which increased air travelers from the United Kingdom by 39 percent.

“The easier it is for someone to get from their country to the United States, the more effective we can be with marketing and branding,” Ralenkotter said. “In these discussions, we have to be sure we have the ability to bring the visitors here, no matter what else is going on the market.”