Foreign tourist planning to visit the United States? Here is how to avoid the $14 ESTA fee for the next two years!

by Scott Carmichael on

As you’ve read here on Gadling, tourists planning to visit the U.S. will soon have to start paying a $14 fee. $10 of that fee goes into a fund to help promote tourism to the U.S. – and yes, we totally understand how insane it is to ask tourists coming here to pay to promote coming here.

That said, there is a way to avoid this fee for the next 24 months – simply apply for an ESTA visa before September 8, and leave the “travel information” fields empty. These fields are not required and your form will be processed just fine without them.

This will get you approval (assuming you are not a terrorist) and a 24 month ESTA authorization, without having to pay any fees. The only requirement is that your passport needs to be valid for the entire 24 month period. Once it expires, you’ll need to re-apply (and pay the fee.)

If you wait till after September 8, you’ll be charged the $14 fee. So, even if you are not sure you are coming to the United States, apply anyway, and in the worst case, you’ll have lost ten minutes of your time. Then, when you get here, use the $14 you saved to buy something nice.

[Photo from: Getty Images]

European airlines playing hardball with passengers lacking US travel clearance

by Scott Carmichael on

Last year, the United States introduced the ESTA visa pre-clearance system. With ESTA, all US bound passengers from visa waiver countries need to apply for travel permission 72 hours before they depart.

The system is designed to give the US government a clear picture who will be attempting to enter the country. In its early stages, airlines were given a bit of leeway when it came to passengers boarding their planes without the ESTA approval, but starting March 20th, that will no longer be the case.

For each passenger that arrives in the US without clearance, the airline will be fined $3300. Obviously, this steep fine means the airlines will be paying extremely close attention to passenger documents. Dutch national carrier KLM claims that about 7% of their daily US bound passengers failed to apply for the ESTA clearance. This number equals 350 passengers, or a potential fine of over one million Dollars each day!

At check-in, staff will be able to verify the ESTA status, and for those passengers that “forgot” to do their homework, an expedited system is available. But if the systems are down, or the clearance is not granted on time, passengers will be denied boarding.

United States considering $10 “tourist fee” to pay for promoting tourism

by Scott Carmichael on

A proposal currently under consideration in the U.S. Congress may soon charge visitors to the United States a $10 entry fee.

The fee will go into a fund used to pay for promoting tourism. By now, I can imagine you are laughing about this (unless you don’t live in the U.S.). The concept of having tourists pay for the PR activities of a country they are already visiting is completely insane.

The idea behind the bill is that promoting tourism should not cost the U.S. taxpayer, something I completely disagree with.

The European Union is obviously against the concept, and given the hassles tourists already encounter when they come to the country, I have to agree with them.

The $10 tourism sponsorship fee would be linked to the ESTA pre-registration system currently required for all visitors from visa waiver countries. When ESTA was introduced, foreigners were told that it would always be free, and by hiding the new fee as a “tourism sponsorship fee”, the government obviously thinks they are keeping their word. The site currently says that there may be a fee in the future.

A family of five will have to pay $50, just for the right to travel to the States, in addition to any new luggage fees imposed by the airlines. This means a trip to the United States could start costing about $400 more than it used to – a price many people may simply refuse to pay, making them head elsewhere instead.

As always in the tit-for-tat world of immigration, if the U.S. pushes ahead with this, expect other nations to do the same to Americans heading abroad.

The end result could easily be a really well filled tourism promotion fund, but another slump in tourism and American tourists having to pay a reciprocal fee whenever they visit Europe.

One other thing to keep in mind, is that this fee (if implemented through ESTA) will most likely require a debit or credit card, something not everyone abroad possesses. ESTA itself is a horrible system, because it requires a computer to access, locking out anyone without Internet access. Now the penalty could be double – you’ll need Internet access and a credit card if you want to visit the US of A.

The bill in question, and all details about the proposal can be found here: Travel promotion act of 2009. The bill calls for a non-profit company to manage the money, and proposes to fund it with $100,000,000 in its first year.

Visting the US? Remember to register with ESTA before you leave!

by Scott Carmichael on

If you live in one of the countries participating in the US Visa Waiver program, pay attention, as things just got a little more complicated for you.

As of January 12th 2009, all visitors to the US who are eligible for the visa waiver program will have to apply for travel authorization at least 72 hours prior to their trip.

There are 35 countries that participate in the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), and if you have ever come to the US on the VWP, you’ll have probably filled in one of those annoying green forms on your flight here.

Those days are now officially over, and the US Government wants to know who is coming here, before they get on the plane.

Statistics from the Department of Homeland Security claim that 99.6% of all people who apply for travel permission get it granted within seconds, which still leaves a fairly decent amount of people who do not get it, for any number of reasons.

The new authorization system is called ESTA – Electronic System for Travel Authorization. The site is available in 16 different languages. To apply for permission to fly to the US, you enter all your personal information, passport data, and flight numbers. You then get to answer the same questions you probably remember from the VWP form, which are there to determine whether you are a Nazi, drug dealer or other nasty kind of person.
If all works out, and you are not on a terrorist watch list, you’ll receive an authorization number. If the system declines your request, you’ll be required to apply for a regular visa through your local US Consulate or Embassy, which will most certainly take some time, so be sure you don’t wait too long!

Of course, as with all new systems like this, there are going to be some glitches, but the most worrying statistic is that far too many people had not heard of the new rules, and arrive at the airport unprepared. Thankfully, the US government has allowed for a short grace period.

The hardest hit are going to be people without Internet access as there is no offline application process. There will be no terminals at the airport, and people in a VWP country who arrive at the airport without an ESTA authorization number may be denied boarding.

Once you register for ESTA, the authorization is valid for 2 years, or the life of your passport (whichever is shorter). As with all international travel, you will need at least 6 months duration left on your passport if you want authorization.

The official ESTA site can be found here, just make sure you don’t fall for the tricks of paid services like Esta.us, who’ll do “all the hard work” for you, for a mere $249!