Closing the Tourist Gap

Playing the genial host, the U.S. Senate last week laid out a huge welcome mat for foreign tourists anxious to visit the U.S. Passed by the Senate and sent to the House of Representatives for almost certain approval was a bill establishing a United States Travel Service, whose function will be to persuade more foreigners to visit the U.S. Provided with an initial budget of $5,000,000, the national tourist office will open branch offices abroad, work with private business to simplify tour arrangements and hotel accommodations, entice potential visitors with a "Tour the U.S.A." program.

Proponents of the bill cite the mutual understanding between nations that can be gained by an expanded exchange of tourists. But the immediate reason for stepping up the tourist inflow is the continued anxiety over the gold outflow. Last year the U.S.'s 2,000,000 tourists abroad spent $1,145,000,000 more than the 87,000 foreign visitors to the U.S., a "tourist gap" that accounted for nearly one-third of the U.S.'s total balance-of-payments deficit. Yet the U.S. allotted less money for travel promotion than either Cyprus or the Congo.

Faster Visas. An important task of the tourist service will be to speed up visa and entry procedures. A major irritant for foreign travelers is the U.S.'s visa requirement, a practice that has all but disappeared in Western Europe. The State Department, however, stoutly maintains that without tight visa regulations, a flood of ineligible foreigners posing as tourists would enter the U.S. with every intention of staying; deportation proceedings against these people would be difficult, time consuming and costly (an estimated $3,000 per person).

U.S. consulates abroad have done much to simplify visa applications. Only suspect applicants, e.g., Communists, those with police records or no financial resources, are forced to fill out the long visa application form. Sample warnings: a caution that anyone who has "engaged in prostitution or will engage in immoral sexual acts" or anyone who is "likely to become a public charge" will be excluded. Except for such cases, most applicants just give pertinent information (name, date and place of birth) to clerks who transcribe it on the short visa form. The whole process usually takes less than 20 minutes.

Dragon Slaying. Europe's airlines are vigorously pushing "Tour the U.S.A." as a virtually untapped source of revenue. Many airlines are tying up with U.S. airlines and bus companies and hotels to offer Europeans packaged tours of the U.S. Scandinavian Airlines System is setting up seminars in key European cities to brief travel agents on how to sell tourists on the U.S. Air France has launched an intensive "Visit U.S.A." advertising campaign, has handed out more than 100,000 handsome color brochures of the U.S. British Overseas Airways Corp. is making a movie of scenic spots in the U.S. that it intends to distribute throughout the free world.

To lure European tourists to the U.S., the airlines have set out to crush one of Europe's most cherished myths: that a traveler must have a gold-lined pocket to visit the U.S. So far, KLM has done most of the dragon slaying. Its agents are pushing a clever little booklet called Een Handige Budget-Baedeker. To potential travelers the Budget-Baedeker gives helpful tips on where to find bargains in New York--Woolworth's, Klein's on Union Square, Masters discount house, and Ohrbach's ("copies of haute couture"}--and how to get by adequately on $12 to $13 a day. It suggests that tourists eat as Americans do--at drugstores, Howard Johnson's ("excellent soup of mussels,'' i.e., clam chowder), Chock Full O' Nuts ("that super-American institution''), and a hectic Broadway cafeteria named Hector's. The Budget-Baedeker adds that tourists need not worry, no matter how unprepossessing the restaurant, since "food is handled everywhere under conditions of strictest hygiene."

KLM's campaign has already produced results. During the slow winter months, its transatlantic traffic increased 49% over last year; over the full year, KLM expects a 20% rise. Other lines hope for similar gains. With the added encouragement from the U.S., the time may come when the European who wants to escape the summer invasion by U.S. tourists of his own land will fly off to Manhattan instead of fleeing to the country.

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