Skift Take
International arrivals to the U.S. are slowing down, so the industry is right to worry that requiring travelers to disclose social media profiles as part of the online application for the visa waiver program could be viewed as unwelcoming.
It's fair to say that the United States' inbound tourism market has seen better times.
International visitation is down 1.9 percent for the first six months of the year, according to preliminary data shared by the U.S. Commerce Department's National Travel and Tourism Office. Market share is declining too, with trade lobby group U.S. Travel Association reporting a four-year slide in global market share of long haul travel to 11.3 percent this year. They predict that number will drop to 10.9 percent by 2022, costing the U.S. $180 billion in international traveler spending.
And amidst all of this, the country's tourism marketing arm Brand USA has still not been renewed, though some progress has been made on that front over the summer. This is the backdrop upon which a proposal from the Department of Homeland Security to make the collection of social media profiles a requirement of the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) application is worrying travel officials. That would be everything an individual has posted on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and more.
Visitors from 38 eligible countries use the online application system to apply for the U.S.'s Visa Waiver Program. The Homeland Security proposal is to require "social media user identifications (also known as usernames, identifiers, or handles)" for a number of mainstream social media networks that the applicant used in the past five years. Currently, such a disclosure is optional.
The information would be limited to what is publicly available without a person having to follow, friend, or connect with the user. Homeland Security
