AMERICA THE EXCEPTIONAL - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 260

countries approve visas online. It was as if the United States was closing off its border, with
ramifications far beyond the travel and tourism industry.
In 2008 the State Department added new requirements for visas but promised to reduce
to one month the average time it took to process a request. In addition, most visa applicants
were newly required to be fingerprinted through a biometric finger scan. Susan Jacobs,
the senior policy advisor for the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs during the
Bush administration, said the travel industry was complaining too much. “We're not in
the business of encouraging tourism,” she told me. “These are small irritations, but once
people get used to them it won't be an irritation at all,” she said.
Ambassador Jacobs said the government had created a “secure process where people
are treated properly” and where they know what to expect. But a visa did not mean auto-
matic entry. “The way the law is written, a visa is only permission to apply for entry at a
point of entry. That means we can turn away a visitor. Even Americans are checked when
they come back,” she said.
No one—not the Secretary of Homeland Security or the lowly airport inspection of-
ficer—wanted to be blamed for allowing a terrorist into the country.
Many American foreign service officers disagreed with Ambassador Jacobs but had to
do so anonymously. One diplomat told me that the new visa policies were undermining
support for the United States. He said: “Tourists are the best public diplomats, period. Like
clockwork, they fall in love with a country on a visit no matter what their previous views.
They go home and say how wonderful the U.S. is. Not anymore. More and more aren't
coming. We've lost all of that good will.”
The 2007 survey revealing foreign attitudes changed the travel industry's view of gov-
ernment policies. “Now, instead of being neutral, the government is putting obstacles in
the path of our industry,” said Freeman. “Homeland Security seems to be asking: 'how do
we discourage people from traveling today?' The travel industry thought that the govern-
ment would roll back some of the security measures. It didn't happen. Among us, this has
been a wake-up call.”
His group hired Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of Homeland Security, to plead their
case for “reasonable and efficient” changes at the border to make visitors feel welcome.
Ridge had been an affable but largely figurehead secretary in office; President Bush's inner
sanctum had made all of the national security decisions, which he then carried out. As an
outside lobbyist, he could not make a dent in the iron curtain drawn around the protocols
and decisions at the airports and borders that were driving away the most desirable tourists.
Ridge did not stay very long with the group.
The Bush administration created an advisory board on tourism in 2005 composed of in-
dustry titans, including J. W. Marriott, Jr., chairman and chief executive of Marriott Inter-
national, and Glenn Tilton, chairman and chief executive of UAL Corporation, the parent
company of United Air Lines. But the board failed to convince the administration on most