More open visa rules beckon visitors

LOS ANGELES — Jong Min Kang's South Korean relatives are exactly the kind of travelers American hospitality and retail businesses are yearning for during this time of financial despair — free-spending foreigners on vacation.

Members of his large family — there are 70 cousins altogether — have vacationed in Australia, Cambodia and China. But they've never come to the United States because they dreaded the long lines, interminable waits and nosy interviews required to get a visa.

Soon they might not have to.

The federal government plans to add South Korea and six Eastern European countries to its list of places whose nationals will be allowed to visit the United States without a visa.

The move — which could go into effect as early as next month — will give travelers from those areas the same privilege enjoyed by residents of the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Japan and other European and Asian allies.

But backers hope the program will bolster the nation's tourism industry, which relies increasingly on foreign visitors.

Recent efforts to boost the number of overseas travelers to the U.S. resulted in a 10 percent increase in the number of international visitors in 2007 over the previous year, a growth that continued at least through the first half of 2008. But the volume of tourists from Europe, Asia and other destinations is still down since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Last year, 24 million overseas travelers visited the U.S., down from 26 million in 2000.

"International travel is absolutely critical to supporting the American economy," said Geoff Freeman, senior vice president of public affairs for the Travel Industry Association, which lobbied for the recent expansion of the visa waiver program.

The association says tighter entry procedures since the Sept. 11 attacks have cost the U.S. 46 million overseas visitors and $140 billion in lost spending. Add to that the current global financial crisis, and the number of overseas visitors to the U.S. could drop overall next year, from about 25.6 million this year to 24.8 million in 2009, the association said.

U.S. tourism officials hope that easing visa rules could help turn that trend around as soon as 2010.

With a lifting of the visa requirement, the number of South Korean tourists to the U.S. is projected to more than double from 800,000 annually to 1.8 million within the next two or three years, the association said.

Travelers from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia also will be allowed to visit the U.S. for 90 days without visas, and officials hope they generate several hundred thousand more visits in the coming years as they begin to find it easier to come to America.

It's the first time the U.S. has expanded the waiver program since 1999 and could bring to 34 the number of nations whose residents can come here without a visa.

Of course, the slumping worldwide economy has eaten away at foreign wealth along with American wealth. The South Korean currency and stock market has taken steep dives. Lithuania is teetering on recession and the Estonian kroon is losing its value against the U.S. dollar.

"With the financial crisis, people are generally going to be very careful about traveling now," said Anders Aslund, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "It's going to be more expensive because of higher energy prices and the rising U.S. dollar."

Although this is worrisome to tourism officials, some say that any increase in overseas travel is welcome.

"We're concerned, but the past has shown that international travelers always stay longer and spend more," said Mark Liberman, president and chief executive of LA Inc., the Los Angeles convention and visitors bureau.

Overseas travelers tend to spend about $4,000 per trip, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Travel Industry Association. By comparison, domestic travelers spend an average of $557 per trip, and their ranks have been thinned by the slow economy.

Officials say Southern California will be one of the main benefactors of increased South Korean tourism. The region is home to 600,000 Korean Americans and a Koreatown in L.A. that some people compare to a district of Seoul.

"Starting from Los Angeles, they will go to Universal Studios, Disneyland and the downtown area," said Edward Han, director of operations for Wilshire Plaza Hotel in Koreatown. "They will look at the rest of America from here and realize they can go to San Francisco or Las Vegas and also the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone."

Officials at South Korea's Asiana Airlines announced that the air carrier will reinstate in December direct flights between Seoul and L.A. for the first time in 17 years. They will also add nonstop flights between Seoul and Seattle.

Partly in response to national security concerns, the visa requirements will not change until South Korea and the other countries implement an electronic authorization system for outbound tourists so that American officials can vet visitors before they arrive. They also must finalize agreements on sharing law enforcement intelligence and show their recent visa rejection rates have not exceeded a U.S. set threshold.

The countries have until Jan. 12 to set up the authorization systems, but U.S. authorities hope that everything will be in place much sooner, perhaps toward the end of November.