U.S. to start charging tourists an entrance fee
September 18, 2009
The U.S. senate has just voted almost unanimously in favour of charging tourists $10 to visit the country. People from visa-waiver countries will now be asked to pay the $10 when they apply to enter the U.S. Rather bizarrely the new charge is part of a U.S. drive to get more people to travel to America. The idea behind the move is that money raised from the new charge would go towards advertising America to other potential visitors.
In recent years the U.S. has seen a decline in foreign visitors. This year the figures for foreign visitors are expected to be eight percent down on last year and visitor spending is already down by fifteen percent.
Foreign travel is extremely important to the U.S. economy and this was recently illustrated in a study that showed that even though only twenty percent of visitors to New York were from overseas their contribution to visitor spending in the city was forty-eight percent.
Lawmakers who support the new bill in the U.S. have pointed out that foreign governments often aggressively promote their country to attract foreign visitors and say that the U.S. government should start doing the same rather than leaving it up to the private sector. One U.S. senator pointed to a new Australian tourism campaign presently being rolled out in the U.S. as an example of how America should be selling itself.
Another senator was rather more dismissive of the bill saying that he was not sure the best way to get people to come to the U.S. was to charge them an entrance fee. John Bruton, The European Commission’s Ambassador to Washington said that a penalty being used to promote an activity sounded like something out of Alice in Wonderland.
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