Hilton CEO Says U.S. Government Needs to Act to Help Tourism

25.08.2023 - 14:16 / skift.com / Christopher Nassetta / U.S.Travelassociation / Geoff Freeman / Sean Oneill / Chris Nassetta

Chris Nassetta, CEO of Hilton and incoming national chair of the U.S. Travel Association, called on Wednesday for U.S. government officials to cut visa wait times that he said were hurting the country’s domestic travel sector and U.S. federal revenues.

“I was deeply involved with the effort to lobby the Obama Administration when we had a very similar issue, though it wasn’t as extreme,” Nassetta said. “We worked closely with the Administration to get it down to 21 days. So we’re going to make the case again.”

Roughly 40 percent of people with an intent to travel to the U.S. live in a country where they must get an interview at a U.S. consulate as part of their visa application. Several consulates and embassies now have wait times in the hundreds of days. According to theU.S. State Department, the wait time as of Tuesday in New Delhi was 616 days, and in Mexico City was 549 days.

Nassetta said that when he becomes national chair of the lobbying group later this month he would lead a “ratcheting up of attention” to the issue.

“Why now?” Nassetta asked. “Because it’s time. It’s relevant to helping major cities by bringing more international travelers. Plus, it’s a revenue raiser for the government. Everyone knows that the fees you pay for a visa application exceed the costs if things are done efficiently.”

The U.S. Travel Association forecast that the U.S. would lose billions in travel spending in 2023 because between 2 and 6 million people may be unable to visit this year despite applying to do so.

“Travel’s recovery is the nation’s recovery when it comes to jobs,” said Geoff Freeman, president and CEO of U.S. Travel.

Nassetta set out on Wednesday a broad agenda he planned to help U.S. Travel pursue alongside Freeman. Both described the lobbying group as non-partisan with friends across the political aisles.

The association claimed a recent win with the signing of legislation last year to create an assistant secretary position with a tourism focus. Destination marketers first proposed the role in 1996.

But the timeline for filling that position remains up in the air. One hangup is that the position was designated vaguely to be in the Commerce Department. But that department is mandated by Congress to fulfill a couple of other, longer-running projects to, effectively, help rural areas reduce, rather than increase, any over-reliance on tourism in their local economies, such as by creating other infrastructure like microchip factories and broadband service to support digital enterprises.

“We’ll work this year to get funding for that position,” Freeman said.

Another hot topic for Nassetta and Freeman was pushing the government to speed up an overhaul of the U.S. air travel system.

“This isn’t about