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Passport education programs underway

Passports required as of January 23 to enter U.S. by air

By Andrew Mitchell

With the weeks and months counting down until new security laws go into effect at American border crossings, tourism organizations on both sides of the border have ratcheted up their campaigns to educate a public that’s unaware and in some cases confused by new U.S. passport requirement.

At the same time, state and provincial governments, tourism associations and other organizations opposed to the passport requirements under the U.S. Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative are increasing their own lobbying efforts to have the new rules delayed, lifted, or altered to allow for existing forms of identification.

The new requirement applies only to people entering the U.S., including American tourists who have to pass through borders and customs to return home. Typically driver’s licences, birth certificates and other forms of government identification were adequate for people entering, or returning to, the U.S. from Canada, Mexico, Bermuda, Panama, and most Caribbean destinations.

The new passport requirement will be phased in over a year. Opponents succeeded in pushing back the passport requirement for airports from Jan. 1 2007 to Jan. 23. People travelling to the U.S. without a passport after that time may be turned back, or forced to go through a time-consuming screening process.

For people travelling by car, bus and train, the passport requirement kicks in at midnight on Dec. 31, 2007.   Frequent travelers who already have Nexus cards will be able to travel as usual.

Fearing that the passport requirement will present a barrier to American tourists visiting Canada, tourism organizations have stepped up a marketing campaign to ensure all potential visitors know of the requirement, and to make it easier for them to get a passport.

Tourism Whistler currently has a link to a page explaining the new requirement, and has created a postcard explaining the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. As well, reservation centres like Whistler.com and travel agents are taking additional steps to inform guests booking their vacations.

Nobody knows how the changes might affect tourism to Canada or Whistler, although according to a recent article in the New York Times travel section only 27 per cent of Americans currently have passports. Furthermore, the cost of acquiring passports might be prohibitive for some families.

A U.S. passport is available for $97 for adults and $82 for children under 16. One family that booked a cruise saw their bill for a three-day Mexican cruise increase by over $1,186 U.S. when they factored in the cost of buying passports for eight adults and five children.

More Americans are expected to get passports as a result of the changes, and the State Department has hired an additional 250 employees to handle an increased number of applications. In an average year about 12.3 million Americans apply for passports, a number that is expected to increase to 16 million in 2007.

According to Michele Comeau Thompson, director of communications for Tourism Whistler, the early indication is that the impact on the air travel market will not be as bad as for land crossing.

“We’re certainly monitoring any and all information sources we have and what we’re hearing from the call centres, and what we’ve found is that from an air travel perspective (the passport requirement) is not nearly as big an issue,” she said. “For example, we have a huge customer base in California, but more than likely they would fall into the group of people that already has passports. We do believe that a lot of our long haul customers already have passports, so that’s good news.

“That’s not to say there won’t be some impacts, especially with families that may not have passports for their kids yet, which is why we have to make sure people have all the latest and greatest information. We have to stay on top of the issue, and watch what the impacts might be.”

Comeau Thompson is also encouraged by recent lobbying efforts on both sides of the border that suggest passport requirements for land crossings might be delayed or even lifted.

“Most of the lobbying efforts are really about land border crossings, and for air there was no change,” she said. “We did get the air requirement pushed back a couple of weeks in January, to the new Jan. 23 date,” she said.

“There is still a good chance that the date of impact for land could still be much later, at least one year later than the date that’s currently being proposed and possibly more. That’s still up in the air, but it’s encouraging.

“From a Whistler perspective I do believe, through research and some anecdotal information, that most of the impact will be to our land crossing customers. But if we can’t push the date back, the good news is we still have a year to make sure those customers are informed and prepared for the change.”

One proposal floated by Washington Governor Christine Gregoire two weeks ago suggested that driver’s license scanners could be used as an alternative to passports. Licenses qualify as photo identification, and most come with unique barcodes.

As well, most people already have valid licenses, and their use at borders would prevent the need for people to purchase passports or other forms of high-tech I.D. cards that have been proposed for American travellers.

Although 40 per cent of Canadians currently carry passports, the U.S. travel industry is particularly worried about the new passport requirement. Canadians rank first in visitors to the U.S. and second to the Japanese in tourism expenditures, with a record of $12.3 billion in tourism expenditures in 2005. Comparatively, Americans spent just $9.1 billion in Canada last year, despite the fact their population is almost 10 times the size of Canada’s.