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Posted at September 16, 2010

Travel Promotion Act – Necessary or Just Bad Business?

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Author: Kathryn Frengs (350 Articles)

Travelfusion's Social Media Officer, I manage all of our online marketing and presence on Twitter, Facebook, our blog and more. I love my job!

In a controversial move, the United States has enacted a “Travel Promotion Act” to raise funds for tourism promotion.  Though this bill was passed through the United States Congress in 2009 and signed into law by President Obama earlier this year, it’s only gone into effect since yesterday, 15 September, 2010.

us dollar

Photo credit: Omer Wazir

One of the main principles of the bill includes the creation of a non-profit Travel Promotion Corporation in the United States whose main purpose (you guessed it!) is to promote travel through advertising and marketing in an attempt to reverse the recent decline in visitor numbers to the US. Think of the brilliant South Africa or Australia tourism ads that can be seen in UK cinemas as of late – perhaps this is the idea?

The more controversial portion of the bill is of course the fee structure.  As of yesterday, citizens of 36 nations will be charged a fee upon entering the United States.  All of these countries are a part of the United States Visa Waiver Programme that allows visitors to enter the United States and remain for up to 90 days without a visa.  This fee is broken up into two parts: $10 to fund this newly created Travel Promotion Corporation and an additional $4 for operational costs, coming to $14 total. The fee is not levied per trip to the United States but instead once every two years.

Here’s a list of the countries whose citizens will now be charged to enter the United States:

· Andorra
· Australia
· Austria
· Belgium
· Brunei
· Czech Republic
· Denmark/Greenland/Faroe Islands
· Estonia
· Finland
· France
· Germany
· Greece
· Hungary
· Iceland
· Ireland
· Italy
· Japan
· Latvia
· Liechtenstein
· Lithuania
· Luxembourg
· Malta
· Monaco
· Netherlands/Netherlands Antilles/Aruba
· New Zealand
· Norway
· Portugal
· San Marino
· Singapore
· Slovakia
· Slovenia
· South Korea
· Spain
· Sweden
· Switzerland
· United Kingdom

Now that you see the facts, what do you think of this new bill and charge? Does it make sense to charge travellers already in the act of making a trip to the United States in order to promote tourism? Are the EU Government spokespeople and citizens who are outraged over the fee justified? Should these travellers from the above-referenced visa waiver countries be happy to enter without the hassle and added cost of obtaining a visa in the first place? For travellers who enter the U.S. often, is $14 every two years a reasonable sum?

I’m interested to hear what our readers think about this.  Do you travel to the United States? Will it make you think twice about travelling there or is the fee really no big deal?

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  • SAH

    I do not mind this new fee that much, I think it sucks but I can “spare” 14$ every 2 years. The one thing I do not understand is why don't they apply this tax to the american citizens? I think it would make sense to have Americans pay for their own Tourism industry and not the travellers who already want to come to the US!

  • Cheap Flights to Cyprus

    its a good move by the government to implement the things to do better.

  • Travelfusion

    Thanks for your comment! I'm definitely interested in seeing what changes start happening once they've been able to gather fees for a while!

  • Travelfusion

    Hi SAH,

    Thanks for your comment and good point! It does seem a bit curious that people who are already planning to go to the US are the ones being charged! They're already there!

  • Patsy

    The intention is to increase tourism but the unintended consequence may be to discourage it. Seems punitive to gouge the people who are already traveling.

  • Travelfusion

    Hi Patsy,

    Thanks for your comment and insight. I think you may be onto something about unintended consequences. I may need to do a post to follow up on this in a year or so to see what has happened to the tourism numbers in the meantime!

    Kathryn @Travelfusion

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