UAE residents can now enjoy a simplified procedure when applying for a tourist visa for the United States. According to the US Embassy in the country, the waiting time for interview appointment has been reduced and a new, online application form will make the whole procedure faster and easier as well.
US Embassy officials launched a new program for simplifying the application process this January and now they are certain of its positive results. This visa program includes online application forms and online payments which are aimed at better and faster service. According to Christine Harold-Aluyen, Consul General at the US Embassy in Abu Dhabi, the waiting time for a visa interview appointment have been significantly reduced to one week in some cases from three weeks a year ago. US visa applicants now receive their documents – visa and passport, within three to five days after they had been to an interview. Of course, the requirements are very different and depend on the type of visa you are applying for, but the rules for tourist visas are in general not very restrictive.
Another advantage of the new visa program is that UAE residents, including Emirati nationals, can get the so-called multiple-entry tourist visa which can be used for a period of ten years. In other words, applicants from the UAE will have to apply only once in ten years for a visa!
This move is probably a result from the increasing number of Middle Eastern tourists in the United States during the past several years. According to the US Department of Commerce, a record 62 million foreigners visited the country in 2011, an increase of 2.5 million from 2010. This annual upsurge was greatly assisted by a 10 percent increase in tourists from the Middle East. According to data, they were nearly 811,000 or more than 200,000 more than Department’s forecasts for the period. A new data released by the Office of Travel & Tourism Industries in the US says that year 2012 saw 858, 841 tourists from the Middle East, or 13.8 percent increase from the previous year. Although countries in the Middle East are still not among the top twenty tourist-generating countries such as Canada, Mexico, UK, Japan, Germany or Brazil, the number of Arab tourists in the US is increasing with high rates.
Why Middle East travelers are so important? Tourists from the region spend on an average 24 nights abroad per trip and over $1,700 which is higher than European tourists with an average expenditure per trip of about $1,200. According to forecasts by the World Tourism Organization (WTO), there will be a significant outbound tourism from the region, with a total of 35 million tourists flying out to international destinations by 2020. By this year, the most important growth will come from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt and Lebanon.
In addition, more than two-thirds of holiday travelers from the Middle East travel with their family and nearly half of them prefer to stay in 4- and 5-star hotels and furnished apartments. They also plan their trips very well – 60 percent of tourists from the region decide their travel destination and property to stay from one week to two months before their departure. These are the main reasons for targeting Arab travelers, not only as leisure tourists, but also as outbound business travellers.
