Air Security Dents Florida Tourism

International arrivals at the Orlando airport plummeted 13 percent to 380,413 people during the first half of 2006, and the travel industry thinks it knows why.

Foreign tourists are turning away in droves from a vacation in the United States because they simply don't want to deal with the hassle of America's extensive security measures.

A year after the U.S. government announced an effort to improve access for foreign visitors, a national travel lobby and the tourists navigating the system say government is not acting quickly enough to stop a decline in business.

"As a whole, government has not decided we are better off by bringing more travelers into the country," said Geoff Freeman, executive director of the Discover America Partnership.

Southwest Florida has a major stake in the effort. Foreign tourists are a staple. Many of them make their way to this area's beaches and museums after a visit to Mickey Mouse, Shamu and Universal Studios.

A year ago, the tourism lobby applauded a joint initiative by the Department of Homeland Security and Department of State called "Secure Borders and Open Doors."

The goal was to shorten wait times for visas and make airport screening friendlier.

Now the partnership -- whose leaders include Bud Nocera, chief executive of Visit Florida, and Jay Rasulo, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts -- is pushing for quicker, more extensive reform.

The Discover America Partnership has hired Tom Ridge as a consultant. The former Homeland Security secretary is helping the partnership come up with a list of its own recommendations, to be announced Jan. 31 at an industry meeting in Washington, D.C.

But despite the added lobbying power and gravitas, the nation's law-enforcement agencies are not going to compromise their mission just because the industry is worried about its bottom line, says Kelly Klundt, a Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman working on the "Secure Borders and Open Doors" initiative.

"We are a law enforcement agency. We're enforcing 490 different laws," Klundt said.

At stake in the struggle are people like Wieland Ludwig, a German tourist who brought his wife and mother to Anna Maria Island for Christmas and New Year's.

The Ludwigs have been coming for 15 years, but Wieland Ludwig said he won't return unless he has at least two weeks to spend -- enough time to relax after the airport hassle.

The Ludwigs traveled through Dulles International Airport, and despite having two hours to thread security, they missed their connecting flight to Tampa. Dulles happens to be one of two airports that Homeland Security said last year would become a "model port of entry" under "Secure Borders and Open Doors."

Dulles also is in the midst of a major expansion and renovation that will include the international arrivals area.

Ludwig said other airports, here and abroad, seem to have enough personnel and equipment to provide security and still move people and luggage quickly.

"You come to Washington, and it's like 9/11 was yesterday," he said.

The partnership, which says it represents broad business interests, thinks stories about inefficiency and poor treatment in airports contribute to a drop in foreign visitors.

The latest U.S. Department of Commerce figures show arrivals from overseas, not including Canada and Mexico, declined by 1 percent to 16.1 million in the first half of 2006. The numbers that Orlando is losing are worrisome, said Freeman, the partnership executive director.

"Orlando, for example, is so dependent on U.K. travelers," he said.

The British are becoming especially turned off to U.S. travel, he said, pointing to feedback published recently by the Telegraph of London.

The Telegraph asked whether, in light of the recently foiled trans-Atlantic terrorist plot, people would still fly to the United States. Ninety percent said 'no.' The Telegraph said that was a marked change from 2002, when the paper asked whether the threat of terrorism had changed readers' travel plans. At that time 89 percent said 'no.'

Feedback published in the newspaper's travel section during the fall was damning.

"The attitude at ports of entry is often -- and increasingly -- sarcastic, suspicious, patronising and downright rude towards British tourists," wrote one reader who said he had visited the United States almost every year for the past 15 years.

Homeland Security is trying to improve the airport experience, said Klundt, the customs spokeswoman.

A major part of that effort is creating a central place to complain about border experiences, regardless of the agency involved.

The department plans to launch a Web portal for complaints. So far, the "Traveler Redress Inquiry Program," known as TRIP, has no launch date.

Apart from "Secure Borders and Open Doors," Customs and Border Protection started its own program to prevent unnecessary interrogation, Klundt said.

More than 19,000 people who share names with those on watch lists went into the system after Customs and Border Protection verified their identities, she said.

"We've avoided over 13,000 automatic secondary inspections," she said.

As for the model ports of entry, Homeland Security plans to install signs and is producing a video, translated into several languages, that will tell foreign travelers what to expect.

Freeman complained that Homeland Security officials did not walk through Dulles until November -- evidence, he says, that the program is stuck on the federal government's "slow track."

Klundt disagrees, saying that what the government is proposing to ameliorate the problem is complex.

"Producing a video from scratch does take a little time. It does take a little money."

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