American travel services

CAA Saskatchewan Travel received the AAA (American Automobile Association) 2009 Award for Members' First Choice for Travel Agency Services, which recognizes customer service excellence, as well as sales per member and growth in tour and cruise sales, which were significantly above the average for AAA and CAA clubs across North America.

Dealing With the New Us Travel Initiative

American travel services

The paramountcy of security considerations in air travel is, for Americans, something that has been non negotiable since terrorists slammed commercial aircraft into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. If there were any likelihood of a lessening of intense feeling about air travel security, this was blown away by the recent plot unearthed in London against transatlantic flights to the USA.

This is the context in which we must view the decision last week by the US lawmakers to reaffirm the deadline for the coming into effect of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. Under this measure, US citizens will be required to have passports in order to return home by air from trips to the Caribbean, Mexico and Canada. Having agreed to extend the previous deadline for its introduction from January 2006 to January 2007, US lawmakers were in no mood for a further extension.

But while insisting on the passport requirements for air travel beginning in January 2007, the lawmakers, apparently at the last minute, entertained lobbying efforts by the cruise-ship industry to postpone the application of the requirement to cruise travellers until June 2009. This is pretty much in line with the treatment accorded border crossings by land in respect of Mexico and Canada. Clearly, trans border crossings and ocean travel are viewed by the Americans as being of lesser ranking in terms of security risks than is air travel.

Notwithstanding the lobbying efforts that must be continued at the highest political levels for similar treatment to the cruise business, it is critical that the key stakeholders of the regional tourist industry intensify their campaigns in US markets to get travellers to acquire passports. The challenge that has been presented will, I am sure, open up opportunities for even more creative means to promote our destinations, and in the process, sensitise potential visitors about the new requirement. As of now, hoteliers, tourist boards, airlines, travel agents and tour operators have been running infomercials, but there needs to be a heightening of awareness as the deadline approaches.

The Caribbean has been benefiting from the fear of terrorism in certain parts of the world since 9/11, and is generally seen as a relatively safe area for travel. Consequently, visitor arrivals in this region have recovered quickly and we are now enjoying real growth. This is even truer for the cruise business, with the Caribbean becoming dominant in that business. Jamaica has done better than the average in the growth of stopover visitor arrivals, as well as in cruise passengers. For the current calendar year, we have indeed been experiencing accelerated growth rates in both areas.

While the cruise side of our business will be further enhanced by the extended grace period granted to it, there are justifiable fears among the hoteliers that this may be partly at the expense of land-based tourism. With a projected 1.2 million stopover visitors from the USA this year and on the basis of the current level of such visitors who travel on documents other than passports, there is substantial work to be done by Jamaica in particular, to mitigate the potential damage of the bias towards the cruise business. This work will not be made easy by any lethargy by American travellers towards acquiring passports.

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