AVIATION INDUSTRY

IATA urges governments to ease visa, travel restrictions

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has called upon governments around the world to ease unnecessary visa and travel restrictions and facilitate passenger movement across borders, which IATA said would spur global economic growth.

"The economic and social benefits of aviation can be spread only by removing onerous barriers to the free movement of people across borders," said IATA"™s director-general and CEO Alexandre de Juniac in Sydney.

«Over the next 20 years, the number of passengers will double. That"™s excellent news for the global economy, as air connectivity is a catalyst for job creation and GDP growth. But we will not get the maximum social and economic benefits from this growth if barriers to travel are not addressed and processes streamlined,» de Juniac said.
There are many barriers to travel, ranging from visa restrictions and government information requirements to the capacity of current facilitation processes to absorb growing numbers of air travellers.

IATA has evolved a comprehensive "Open Borders Strategy" to help governments work with industry to maintain the integrity of national borders while removing inefficiencies that prevent the industry from satisfying travel demand.

Research by the UN World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) and the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) on the impact of visa facilitation indicates that $89bn in tourism receipts and 2.6mn jobs would be created in the Asia-Pacific region alone with the reduction of barriers to travel.

The IATA Open Borders Strategy has four main components such as reviewing visa requirements and removing unnecessary travel restrictions, including travel facilitation as part of bilateral and regional trade negotiations, linking registered-traveller programmes and using Advance Passenger Information (API) data more effectively and efficiently

The goal is to remove unnecessary barriers to travel. Existing visa regimes are overly restrictive, expensive and inefficient, and will be unable to cope with forecast travel demand. The solution to this lies in unlocking the potential from shared information in a trusted framework. This will improve security, while smoothing passenger flows and easing demand for new infrastructure to accommodate the forecast doubling in air travel over the next two decades…

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