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Tourism industry prepares for new U.S. passport regulations

Record numbers heading to passport offices

By Clare Ogilvie

With only days to go before new U.S. regulations come into effect requiring everyone entering that country by air to have a passport Canadians are lining up to get passports in record numbers, and the tourism industry is holding its breath in anticipation of the fallout from the changes.

“Our main concern is that it is another barrier to people choosing Canada as a destination,” said Ray LeBlond, spokesman for Tourism B.C.

“Tourism can be sometimes a path of least resistance and anything that makes it more difficult to choose a place in a competitive environment is a big concern.”

As of Jan. 23 the air portion of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) comes into effect, making it mandatory for all travelers entering the United States by air to have a valid passport or a “Trusted Traveller” NEXUS air card. Phase two of the changes, which affect land and sea travel in and out of the U.S., will come into effect sometime between January 2008 and June 2009 after an extension was put in place by the American government.

The United States has always been a significant market for Whistler and with that in mind Tourism Whistler decided to carry out research in California and Oregon on possible effects of the changes.

President Barrett Fisher said the results indicated that there would be less impact on the California market as many of those destination travellers, already used to international travel, have passports.

  However, she said, the drive-market from Washington State may be impacted, with 23 per cent of those questioned saying they were less likely to travel if they needed a passport to do so.

Tourism Whistler is facing the challenge head on by getting as much educational material into the marketplace as possible on the changes and looking at marketing to combat it.

“Our role has really been about communication, and education with our existing client base and then also getting the message out to potential visitors,” said Fisher.

“Our bigger concern is about the day and weekend drive market. (But) with the extension (on land and sea border regulations) we have at least a year if not longer to get the information out.

“We believe we still have time to raise awareness and grow the profile of this important issue in these markets.”

Americans have long been able to travel to the Caribbean and return home without a passport. They will no longer be able to do that after Jan. 23 so many hotels in the Caribbean and Mexico are offering rebates to American guests, who will have to pay $97 to get a first passport.

The new regulations apply to everyone, not just U.S. citizens, and are not affected by age.

With that in mind Whistler resident Lori Willis headed to Vancouver earlier this month to get her family passports in order as they contemplated international travel this year.

“We were aiming to get (to the Vancouver passport office) at about 7 a.m. because we had heard that the earlier you got there the better it was,” said Willis, who went with husband Bill, Cambria, 8 and Averi, 10.

“The office opened up at 7:30 a.m. and when we got there, there was probably already 100 people lined up. The line went all the way out the door and up two or three flights of stairs.”

Willis said the lineup was no surprise as she expected that after media reports and information from friends, but finding 100 people already lined up at 7 a.m. was.

“We did expect the wait,” she said, adding that their passports should be ready for pick-up by today.

“I think what we weren’t expecting was that many people in front of us. We thought that getting there at 7 a.m. meant we were going to get ahead of the game.”

Willis was all done by 9:45 a.m. and despite the wait she found the process well managed.

“I thought it was quite organized,” she said. “There was a women there telling you what to expect in the lineup, get this ready by the time you are here, by the time you are here you will have another hour wait and so on.”

And Willis got lots of tips from others in the lineup too.

According to Francine Charbonneau, spokeswoman for the Passport Canada office, the process will go smoothly if all the documents needed are in order and the forms filled out properly.

“When people show up at the passport office there is nothing more discouraging than waiting in line for a couple of hours to be turned back because you are missing something on your application,” said Charbonneau.

Applicants should also get their passports mailed in or brought to the application office as far out from their travel dates as possible so that there is no risk of holiday delays due to problems with paperwork.

And, said Charbonneau, make sure passport photos are taken by a specialist.

“We do have very high standards for passport photographs for security reasons so we encourage applicants to go to passport photographers,” she said.

“They do have our standards and what we accept and what we don’t.” (For more information go to www.passportcanada.gc.ca )

In November alone Passport Canada received more than 355,000 applications a 33 per cent increase over November 2005. Records have also been set for December and January to date said Charbonneau.

Canada’s $87 passport takes about 10 business days to get if you apply in person and about 20 business days by mail.

But, said Charbonneau, the sheer volume of applications may start leading to some delays soon, so the earlier people apply the better.

The U.S. is experiencing a similar push for new passports, which take about 6-8 weeks to get. Only about 27 per cent of Americans currently hold a passport, but that number is rising. In the 2002 fiscal year about 7 million passports were issued; in the 2006 fiscal year, 12.1 million passports were issued according to the U.S. State Department website. About 250,000 new passports are produced each week.

The next phase of the WHTI could come in as soon as January 2008, when anyone crossing the U.S. border by land or at sea will need a passport or other approved documentation.

Although the U.S. government is exploring alternative documents, such as passport cards, for use at land crossings, a passport will always be an acceptable document.

More than $1 billion a day in goods crosses the U.S.- Canada border and trade between the two countries topped $37 billion last year.

According to Tourism Vancouver the new U.S. passport regulations for those using air transport may mean that one to two per cent fewer American air travellers will come to Vancouver. Once the land and sea regulations are introduced that number could rise to five or six per cent.

According to Statistics Canada, U.S. residents made fewer than 2.3 million trips to Canada last October, the lowest monthly total for overall travel from the U.S. since record keeping started in 1972. Tourism B.C. estimates that there were just over 300,000 U.S. visitors to the province last October a 6.4 per cent decrease from the same period in 2005.

Michael Kaile, general manager of the Fairmont Chateau Whistler, while concerned, said during the busy winter holiday season most of the guests are destination travelers and have passports already.

“But there is still that period of time during 2007 which we don’t know about yet,” he said.

“When it comes to the more sensitive drive-up traffic from say, Washington State or Oregon, we don’t have an answer for that. That’s when we will get a feeling on the full impact.”

Tourism B.C.’s LeBlond said it might be that the time has come for everyone to make a sea change when it comes to passports.

“What I have been saying generally is that we just have to get into the idea of having a passport culture,” he said.

“ …This is a document that is as important as our drivers licence, our care card, or birth certificate and it is just part of that family of documents we all have.

“It is almost a cultural shift.”

In the meantime the organization is offering information on the new regulations on its web page, linking directly to the applicable U.S. sites, and representatives even phoned anyone who booked vacations through the agency to tell them of the passport regulations so they had plenty of warning.

But when it comes right down to it, said LeBlond, one of the most powerful ways to get the message out is to talk to people about it.

“This is not a tourism industry issue this is a Canadian issue and people should take the steps of encouraging their friends, family and business colleagues in the United States to get passports and if everyone does that we might have greater success,” he said.