The United States will lose $95 billion during the next five years if Congress does not improve the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol entry process, according to a report released Wednesday by the U.S. Travel Association. In the report, conducted by Consensus Research, the association alleged that U.S. and non-U.S. passengers on average waited between nearly three hours and four hours and 40 minutes to be processed by CBP upon entering the United States.
The association surveyed 1,200 overseas travelers from Brazil, China, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom who had traveled outside of their countries during the past five years. To calculate the wait times, it also used CBP data from peak waiting times during June 2012 to May 2013 at five major U.S. gateway airports: Chicago O'Hare, Los Angeles International, Miami, New York JFK and Washington Dulles.
Of the respondents, 44 percent of those U.S. Travel designated as business travelers indicated they would not visit the United States during the next five years because of the country's entry process. Similarly, 43 percent of traveler respondents who had visited the United States in the past five years said they would "recommend avoiding" a trip there because of hassles involving the entry process.”
U.S. Travel estimates that the average overseas visitor spends about $4,500 per trip, which extrapolated represents "about $11.8 billion lost annually directly to the travel industry businesses," according to the report. However, U.S. Travel national chair Jim Abrahamson, also CEO of Interstate Hotels & Resorts, during a Wednesday conference call said that many travelers are not visiting simply as tourists, but as business travelers, which represents an additional boost to the economy.
"They're here for groups and meetings, conventions and tradeshows to purchase American goods and services… [they're] buying heavy equipment, investing in products, services and computer equipment," he said. "This is a tremendous economic energy of the transactional volume that's created."
Abrahamson said he's heard anecdotally from U.S. convention and visitors bureaus that the long wait times at entry points has affected the international meetings sector, citing one organizer who after a Miami tradeshow indicated he would not return to the United States as a result.
The report also found that one in seven overseas visitors had missed a connecting flight to a U.S. destination because of "delays in the entry process at their initial arrival airport."
Nearly two-thirds of respondents said getting rid of long lines and wait times "would make the U.S. a more attractive destination," according to the report.
In 2012, the U.S. government established "a national travel and tourism strategy," which included a goal of attracting 100 million foreign visitors by 2021. U.S. Travel Association president and CEO Roger Dow said the country is "well ahead" of that pace and most likely would reach the goal by 2019.
"But in the research we found, the long process and wait time have caused travelers to say and to tell friends to avoid the U.S.," Dow said. "That can cost over 100 million travelers over five years, which means $95 billion and 518,000 jobs."
The report outlined 20 suggestions to remedy long entry-point wait times, including hiring 3,500 additional CBP officers, enhancing technology, implementing automated passport control and enhancing transparency. Dow estimated adding and training more CBP officers would cost about $460 million per year, or $2.3 billion over five years. "When put in par with the $95 billion at risk, it seems like the ultimate no-brainer," Dow said.
This summer, Chicago O'Hare became the first U.S. airport to implement an automated passport control system, in which U.S. passport holders use a self-service kiosk to be processed by passport control, then take a printout to a customs agent for questioning. Chicago Department of Aviation commissioner Rosemarie Andolino said that the processing time under the new system is about four minutes.
After the installation of 32 kiosks at a cost "a bit more" than $2 million, Andolino said 60 percent of U.S. passport holders cleared customs in 15 minutes or less and 80 percent cleared in 30 minutes or less.
The frequency of missed connections at O'Hare also declined, according to Andolino. United Airlines decreased missed connections by 62 percent and American Airlines reduced them by 76 percent, she claimed during the conference call.
"It was a huge game-changer for us in Chicago, as our passengers didn't suffer the long wait times because of this technology that other airports suffered this summer," Andolino said.
In conjunction with the report, more than 70 travel industry executives have sent an open letter to Congress urging improvements to the entry process, Dow said.
"We're really pushing to say that if you can get the primary inspection process down to 30 minutes or below, especially during peak time, it will add another $3 billion to the U.S. economy and create 24,000 jobs," Dow said.