USA This Monday lifted restrictions on tourist travel at airports and land borders, a measure that has been in force for 19 months for “non-essential travel” and that has returned airports to their usual bustle, without delays or major incidents.
American Airlines, the largest airline in the United States and the world, will operate more than 200 daily flights on different routes, to climb to 300 daily at the beginning of 2022, according to company figures.
Since yesterday, tourists can access the country with requirements similar to those that most countries apply to their visitors and that had been demanded by the tourism sector. These are the measures required by the country:
–ISIn the first place, in the case of most Europeans, including Spaniards, the one known as ESTA for its acronym in English, the travel authorization, which is requested online without having to go to the embassy and is usually granted in a few days, for trips such as tourism and business that do not need a visa.
–Complete vaccination schedule: The US requires the complete schedule of the Covid-19 vaccine, which includes both the US drug agency and the WHO (Moderna, Pfizer, Janssen, AstraZeneca, Sinovac and Sinopharm). The vaccination requirement does not apply to children under 18 years of age.
–Negative Covid Test: The country also requires a negative test for the disease, both PCR and antigen tests, with a maximum of three days before the trip. Required from 2 years of age.
–There will be exceptions to the requirement of the full guideline of vaccination: people who by medical prescription cannot receive the vaccine and emergency travelers who do not have access to the vaccine. These must show a negative test carried out at most one day before boarding.
According to the United States Travel Association, the closure of borders due to the coronavirus It has meant the loss of 300,000 million dollars of countable income as exports, in addition to causing the loss of more than one million jobs associated with the travel and tourism sector.
USA it is the third most visited country in the world in number of travelers (76 million in 2019, behind France and Spain), but it is the first in terms of foreign exchange earnings from tourism, with 214,000 million dollars in 2019, with a large difference over the following, according to figures from the World Tourism Organization. Sightseeing.
The US air closure affected 33 countries -among them the 26 of the Schengen area and such lucrative markets as China, India and Brazil- which represent only 17% of countries in the world but They represent 53% of all visitors to the United States.
In addition, the opening of the land border with the two neighbors to the north (Canada) and the south (Mexico), the two main tourist markets for the United States, will bring significant relief to this sector on the eve of the Christmas season, season high.
Mario Twitchell is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his insightful and thought-provoking writing on a wide range of topics including general and opinion. He currently works as a writer at 247 news agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
