As a measure to raise money, President Obama passed a new law designed to boost the dwindling numbers of foreign tourists. He believes that by charging a $10 fee on top of the ESTA (Electronic Scheme for Travel Authorization) application will somehow raise our declining tourism numbers. If you have to read that line again, it’s not wrong.

Currently, only visitors from Britain and the EU, do not require visas to visit the US on holiday. However, they are required to fill out the ESTA, which will be accompanied by this $10 fee. Since 2001, the US Travel Association has reported, that foreign visitor numbers have fallen significantly year after year. If we compare last year’s tourism rates to that of 2000, you would see a 2.4 million drop in foreign tourists visiting the United States.

Barack Obama’s initiative, which was signed into law as the Travel Promotion Act, is supposed to create the first national tourism body in the US. The job of this new body, will be to increase tourism to the United States. The funding for this endeavor will come partially from the new entrance fee, whereas the rest will arrive via contributions from the private sector.

It’s understandable that most professionals in the tourism industry still remain skeptical about this law. However there is an equal amount of professionals who believe, that by charging a fee to enter our country, will definitely increase tourism. Although, the official effective date has not been released, they are speculating that implementation of a working system would take 6 to 12 months.

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 5th, 2010 at 5:09 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.