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Friday, December 1, 2006
A small bit of good news for the Caribbeans Tourism Industry. The deadline for the recently proposed Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative has been pushed back by two weeks. The initiative which compels every American citizen to have a passport by 2007 in order to regain entry into the United States, has been changed from its initial deadline to January 23, two weeks later then planned. The new date was announced by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. This buys just a little more time for Caribbean countries benefiting from the current conditions, in which U.S. citizens returning from some Caribbean countries are currently allowed to show other ID such as drivers' licenses. That arrangement will come to an end however, when the new deadline comes into effect on January 23, 2007.A study by the World Travel and Tourism Council in London projects losses of US $ 2 billion and more than 180,000 jobs once it goes through.
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