Skift Take
Travel executives have taken the U.S. government to task for not remedying more quickly the delay in processing travel visas that they say is costing the U.S. travel industry in big ways. We went to the top government official working on this. She says efforts are now producing real results, and asks for patience.
American embassies are working around the clock to bring down the amount of time international travelers have to wait to get a visitor visa interview in order to travel to the U.S., according to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Visa Services Julie Stufft. The global median wait time for a B-1 or B-2 visa, also known as a visitor visa, has been reduced from 17 weeks in June to five weeks now.
Aspiring travelers from some U.S. inbound markets, however, still have to wait hundreds of days to get an interview for their first visitor visa. Indian travelers now have to wait 700 days for an interview at the Mumbai embassy, according to the U.S. State Department's website, down from 999 days in January but still very high. It reinforces a 2023 Skift megatrend that large numbers of travelers from non-Western countries will be locked out of U.S. conferences and destinations because of border bottlenecks.Lobbying group U.S. Travel Association estimates visa delays will cost the industry nearly $7 billion in traveler spending in 2023. In January, Marriott CEO Anthony Capuano publicly called on the Biden Administration to take more action in an on-stage interview with the Chamber of Commerce. Hilton CEO Chris Nasetta said he will lead a "ratcheting up of attention" on the issue when he becomes national chair of U.S. Travel.
In this conversation with Skift’s Dawit Habtemariam, Stufft explains the visa bottleneck, U.S. State Department’s efforts to reduce it, why India’s wait times are absurdly high and more. The comments have been edited for length and clarity.
Skift: For two years, international travel was suspended because of the pandemic. Can you explain what happened with U.S. embassies when it came to visa processing in general as borders opened in 2022 and then zoom in on B-1 and B-2 visas?
Julie Stufft: We had an unprecedented work stoppage in our posts overseas and some places we were prohibited from doing th