US cost for international visa woes: $2.4 billion
Convention officials have long wondered exactly how much the difficulty for international visitors to get a visa into the US costs for world meetings. The answer: a staggering US$2.4 billion.
The study conducted by Oxford Economics got responses from 47 US-based events and the CEIR Exhibition Industry Census.
“The CEIR study is significant because it quantifies the amount of revenue lost by people being denied a visa or people not even applying because of the difficulties and complexities with the process,” said Daniel McKinnon, executive vp, Meese Frankfurt USA.
The study showed the loss of 116,000 would-be participants or 2.5 percent of potential international attendees.
Those delegates would have spent US $295 million and generated $750 million in state and federal taxes.
Said Steven Hacker, president of the International Association of Exhibitions and Events:
“We are not going to keep pace as a nation with the economic growth that is now taking place in areas like China, India and South America unless we reduce the barriers that keep legitimate business travelers out of the United States.”
By David Wilkening
David
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