Holders of U.S. passports can currently travel to 186 countries and territories without a travel visa or a visa upon arrival.
Save for Cuba, where we need to obtain a Cuban Tourist Card (“Tarjeta del Turista”), which is often referred to as a “Cuban Visa” (even though it technically isn’t), there are currently no countries in the Caribbean where those with U.S passports need to get a visa.
That may change in the not-too-distant future.
The St. Kitts Observer reports that Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism, Edmund Bartlett, says adopting a regional visa regime among CARICOM nations could have a huge economic potential for tourism recovery and development.
Caribbean Community (CARICOM, sometimes referred to as CC) is an intergovernmental organization that’s a political and economic union of 15 member states (14 nation-states and one dependency) throughout the Caribbean. The group’s primary objectives are to promote economic integration and cooperation among its members, ensure that integration’s benefits are equitably shared, and coordinate foreign policy.
“A regional visa regime is something that we’ve been talking about. I think if we are to build Caribbean tourism, then we must recognize that as individual states, we are too small to grow and to benefit from the recovery of tourism as it now stands, but together as a region, we can grow and we can benefit,” said Mr. Bartlett.
Bartlett also suggested that the area’s tourism industry could benefit from a visa regime in several ways. The most important one, in his view, would be the potential for a multi-destination tourism network.
“A big advantage of this multi-destination is that it offers multiple experiences for visitors who are coming from long haul areas,” the Minister continued. “So, let’s say you’re coming from China and have three weeks of vacation. You don’t want to spend three weeks in Jamaica alone, but you can spend a week in Jamaica, three days there, two days here, another day somewhere else and you come back to wherever the hub was. One fee, one package, one price and we all benefit from it together.”
A multi-destination visa would also help create a single common airspace, where airlines flying to the Caribbean would pay one fee and then have pre-clearance to the rest of the region.
“It will bring more airlines into our space because the turnaround time for the aircraft will be significantly reduced as a result. More rotations could be had, and thus more visitors can come in,” said Bartlett.
“The other element of importance is that it also provides a new skill set to be developed in the Caribbean area. What tourism will be doing is now saying we’re not just people who have bartenders, cooks and housekeepers, but we are into technology, aviation, logistics and procurement,” he continued.
The idea of a shared visa is not without precedence. A special CARICOM visa was implemented for the 2007 Cricket World Cup. With that, the nine host countries (and Dominica) were treated as a single domestic space for travelers for a few months in 2007.
Minister Bartlett specifically mentioned visitors who would be flying great distances to go to the Caribbean. Those coming from Asia, for example, may want to spend an extended time in the area, just as we do when traveling to, well, Asia, simply because the flight is so long. The U.S. is one of the Caribbean’s closest neighbors and I think Americans tend to visit just one Caribbean country and then go back home. So who knows if the CARICOM visa would be required of us, if it ever occurred? But it’s still something to be watched.
Feature Photo: PublicDomainPictures.net
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1 comment
They could become US territories and then apply for statehood (if they desire). One only has to look at Puerto Rico to see the benefits of this route.