Skift Take
More governments are waiving visitor visa requirements to help attract tourists.
Destinations worldwide have increasingly moved to lift visa requirements as part of their strategy to increase visitor numbers — visa processing delays are a major obstacle to the industry's full recovery.
U.S. travel executives have argued that those long visa waits — especially for travelers from major source markets like Brazil, India, Mexico, and China — have hurt the U.S. tourism recovery. International traveler spending in the U.S. in October 2023 was close to a $1 billion lower than the figure recorded in October 2019.
How does visa-free travel impact tourism? We put the question to Ask Skift, our artificial intelligence chatbot. Ask Skift used information that appeared in our past news coverage and we also conducted additional reporting on the subject.
Ask Skift said:Visa-free travel can significantly impact tourism by making