Writer: Joshua Andino
2 min read February 2023 — Last week, Florida mayors signed on to a U.S. Travel Association letter urging the State Department to accelerate international travel visa application wait times.
The letter was signed by ten city and county mayors across the state, including Fort Lauderdale’s Dean Trantalis and Boca Raton’s Scott Singer. International travel continues to lag pre-pandemic levels, and poses one of the few remaining challenges to the tourism industry’s full recovery in Florida, which has seen an otherwise robust and rapid recovery.
The letter stated, “In 2019, 43% of international visitors — and $120 billion in spending — came from countries where a visa is required to enter the United States. The U.S. Travel Association projects that if the current visa situation does not improve, American businesses will lose another 2.6 million potential visitors in 2023. This equates to $5 billion in losses in 2022 and an additional $7 billion in losses in 2023. Extreme delays are harming travel dependent businesses in our cities and counties. Very long wait times for visa interviews stifle local economies as we all strive to fully recover from the pandemic.”
The mayors pointed to four recommendations to help reduce the visitor visa backlog, including setting clear timelines and lowering wait times, reinstating the executive order to provide interview appointments for 80% of nonimmigrant visa applicants within 21 days, increasing consular staffing, and extending interview waivers for low-risk applicants.
Numbers released by Fort Lauderdale International Airport provide a clear snapshot of the backlog that may be impacting travel numbers. By the end of 2022, the airport saw 5,919,905 international travelers, down from 2019’s eight million
The mayor’s push comes as U.S. Department of Commerce data shows the country’s travel trade surplus declined to $4 billion in 2022, down from the decade high of 85.9 billion.
“Travel has historically generated an annual trade surplus that meaningfully reduced the U.S. trade deficit,” said U.S. Travel Association President and CEO Geoff Freeman in a statement. “The latest trade data is a wake-up call for immediate federal action to boost this essential industry and increase travel exports to benefit the entire U.S. economy.”
Interview wait times can take years – according to the State Department website, Interview Required Visitors, (a B1/B2 Visa) would take 882 days to schedule for someone visiting from Bogota, Colombia. Mexico City would take 633 days, and Sao Paulo 528 days.
While international travel remains one of, if not the sole remaining pandemic-related decline in the state’s tourism sector, Florida saw 137.6 million visitors in 2022, the highest number in the state’s history, according to VISIT FLORIDA. The data show a 12.9% increase from 2021 and a 5.0% increase over 2019.
“Quarter after quarter, Florida continues to dominate the travel market and our competition, which could not be achieved without the hard work of our local tourism partners. Florida is breaking records despite overseas visitation remaining 28 percent lower than 2019 due to heinous visa wait times and irrational mandates imposed by the federal government. At VISIT FLORIDA, we are committed to building on this growth to ensure Florida continues to be the No. 1 vacation destination in the world,” said Dana Young, president and CEO of VISIT FLORIDA in a statement.
