Faster Visas, More Direct Flights: What India-U.S. Tourism Needs

27.08.2024 - 16:10 / skift.com / Joe Biden / Thomas Cook / Eric Garcetti / Bulbul Dhawan

What can India and U.S. do to boost tourism? According to the first Indo-U.S. Tourism and Hospitality Summit held by the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce in Delhi on Friday, the answer is speedier visas and more direct flights.

Suman Billa, Additional Secretary with India’s Tourism Ministry, said that the bulk of India-U.S. air travel is through third countries like those in the Middle East or Europe. “If we get more direct flights, not only will the market become more cost competitive for people to travel both ways, but it will also add to the convenience of traveling to the U.S. But for some reason, this is not happening,” he said.

Currently, for the most part, Air India, American Airlines, and United Airlines are the carriers operating non-stop flights between the two countries.

Billa further noted that even though the visa for the U.S. is valid for 10 years, the process is cumbersome. 

Still, there’s been a lot of progress. In January, the U.S. Embassy said that it had reduced visa appointment wait times in India by 75% last year, even as there was a 60% increase in applications from2022. It said that process improvements and staffing decisions brought down the appointment wait time for visitor visas from an average of 1,000 days to 250 days. 

At the Skift India Summit in March, Eric Garcetti, U.S. Ambassador to India, said that he was asked by U.S. President Joe Biden to work on reducing the backlog of visa applications. “I don’t know this for sure, but I bet it’s the only time the United States president has told the ambassador, ‘Please work on visa issues,’” Garcetti said.  

At the Chamber of Commerce event, Jonathan M Heimer, minister counselor for commercial affairs, U.S. Commercial Service, said that over the past year, visa processing has gained momentum. “We have been able to process 60% more visas with more or less the same resources. We have also issued more than 1.1 million visas in the last year, which is a record for us,” he said. 

Short-Term Visas? MakeMyTrip co-founder and group CEO Rajesh Magow suggested the introduction of short-term visas for tourists. “There are many other countries which have done it, so maybe a short-term tourist visa can be quick and could be one potential innovation that can happen,” he said. 

Between January and May 2024, India emerged as the second-largest international source market – not including Canada and Mexico – for tourism in the U.S., data from the U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO) showed. In 2023, 1.7 million Indian tourists visited the U.S., and NTTO is expecting this number to increase to 2 million by 2027. 

India’s Potential for Growth: Billa said that even though India and the U.S. share a strong bilateral relationship and