NEW YORK - People from India have been travelling abroad more, and the United States is trying to accommodate the new tourism boom by opening two new consulates in the South Asian country.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been at the White House this week in what has been billed as a turning point for bilateral relations. Mr Modi had plans to meet on Friday with numerous executives seeking to invest more in India as the US pushes to process more visas.
In 2022, India became for the first time Asia’s highest source of international travellers, according to tourism consultancy IPK International. International travellers from India in 2022 exceeded those of China, South Korea, and Japan, the company said.
The US tourism sector has taken note. “New markets like India may offset (other countries) and help us grow in the long run,” said Mr Geoff Freeman, chairman of the US Travel Association.
The United States will open two new consulates in India in the cities of Bengaluru and Ahmedabad, according to a joint statement from President Joe Biden and Mr Modi.
For the first five months of 2023, travel from India to the US has exceeded pre-pandemic volumes, according to data from the US Department of Commerce National Travel and Tourism Office. Other Asian countries are lagging, particularly China, where travellers have been slow to return to the US post-pandemic.
India last year ranked third among overseas travellers visiting the US, up from eighth in 2019. Those figures do not include cross-border visitors from Canada and Mexico. Executives said the activity reflects trends similar to those that emerged several years ago in China.
“When you think about the power of the Chinese (international) traveller (due to) that rising middle class and wealth creation there, India is going through the same evolution too,” IHG Hotels and Resorts chief executive officer Keith Barr said at a hospitality conference this month.
US embassies and consulates in India have issued 44 per cent more non-immigrant visas in 2023 than in the same period in 2019, and are on course to process over one million visas this year, a State Department spokesman said.
“Our consular teams have been making a huge push to process as many visa applications as possible in India,” said the spokesman. “This is a top priority for our government.”
The outlook for the rest of the year looks promising. Flight bookings from India to the US for the last quarter of 2023 are 26 per cent higher than pre-pandemic levels, according to ForwardKeys, a travel data firm.
The primary bottleneck for travellers has been waiting to get a first-time visitor visas. Wait times were 337 days in early April, down from 669 days in mid-March, according to the US Travel Association.
Air India recently launched non-stop service from Mumbai to New York and San Francisco, and from Bengaluru to San Francisco.
“The number of people of Indian origin who have settled down in the US have been increasing day-by-day for studies or employment. So the demands of their parents, in-laws and families to go has also been increasing,” said Mr Rajiv Mehra, president of the Indian Association of Tour Operators. REUTERS
