TravTalk India Online Magazine
Adam Burke, President & Chief Executive Officer, Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board, was in Mumbai recently to understand how to capture the immense opportunity it offers for his city. The NTO aims to attract more than one million Indian visitors in the next seven years and is actively pushing to reduce visa wait times.
Hazel Jain
Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board has been making waves in the Indian market. It was the first time that LA Tourism’s President & CEO, Adam Burke visited India (Mumbai and New Delhi) after the organization established its full-time India office in 2019. During the visit, Burke and the LA Tourism delegation met and updated the trade about new offerings in and around LA and at the same time, gathered insights about the changing trends among Indian travellers post pandemic.
Burke said, “As one of the world’s fastest-growing markets for tourism, we are proud that Los Angeles Tourism was the first US destination marketing organization to open its own full-time office in India in 2019. We see tremendous opportunities to support the growth of the travel industry in India.”
His visit to India was due to two reasons, he says. “The incredible growth potential in India, as well as to collect business intelligence. We want to understand the right way of engaging this market. Seema Kadam, our regional director, has shared tremendous insights. Our aim now is to partner with the trade and understand from them the best way to activate the market since it’s such a diverse market. There is no question that India is going to be one of the largest markets for travel in the world. We want to welcome more than 1 million Indian visitors a year by 2030,” Burke shares.
India to be among top 5 market for LA?
Speaking about a six-point strategy for the Indian market, Burke says, “The first one is establishing a full-time presence in the market. In 2019, we became the first US tourism office to open a full-time office here. We are also adding a full-time communications team member here. The second point is learning more about the market by meeting airline carriers and the travel trade and asking the right questions. The third thing is that the Los Angeles International Airport is now offering an incentive programme that is an offset to the gate fees, so that airlines that are looking to bring non-stop service to India are able to apply for that programme that reduces their cost to entry into LA.”
About 130,000 Indians visited LA in 2019, injecting $305 million in visitor spending to the local economy. It’s estimated that 110,000 Indian travelers will visit Los Angeles County in 2023, with full recovery to pre-pandemic levels anticipated in 2024. “If we get non-stop service to LAX, we think that India will jump from being a top-10 market to a top-five market virtually overnight,” Burke adds.
Visa wait time to go down
The other issue that is hampering visitor numbers is the long wait for visas. To this Burke says, “Both State and Commerce are actively collaborating to reduce the visa wait time. They have already enacted some of the things. Anyone with a valid US visa expired in the past 36 months can have that visa renewed without the interview requirement. They are prioritising markets where the wait times are longest and India is one of those priority markets and by using Consular staff from other areas, the goal is to radically reduce wait times. Third is investing in video technology so that people in rural areas can get visas. Moreover, the M!CE segment is a huge opportunity for us to partner with the trade here in India. Visas for M!CE groups should in theory be actually easier than individual applicants because every member of that M!CE group is coming to the destination on the exact same dates for the same business purpose. That has not historically been the way for the consulates to process visas. We have requested to process all M!CE groups in a different way, so that M!CE doesn’t suffer. We anticipate a release on this soon.”
LA Milestone Year: 2023
- The new Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Hollywood debuted on February 17. Visitors can battle Team Bowser on Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge, and buy Nintendo themed merchandise.
- On the infrastructure front, Los Angels World Airports (LAWA) is in the midst of a $14 billion capital improvement project at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).
- On the hotel accommodations front, Los Angeles added 5,000 new hotel rooms to its supply over the last two years, bringing the total hotel inventory in LA to 120,000 rooms.
