US sees 6.3% rise in MidEast tourists in H1

Middle East visitors to the US increased 6.3 percent in the first in the first half of 2011, boosted by a turnaround in visitor numbers during the second quarter of the year, according to official figures from the US Office of Travel and Tourism Industries (OTTI). In the first six months of 2011, 267,409 tourists from the Middle East visited the US, a year-on-year increase of 6.3 percent. The first quarter of the year saw the US attract 146,927 Middle East visitors, a slight decrease of 0.5 percent, but a 15.9 percent rise in the second quarter led to the overall positive growth, which was above the OTTI’s forecast of four percent growth for the whole of 2011. As part of the OTTI’s forecast of international visitor numbers, a further four percent growth is expected in visitors from the Middle East in 2012 and five percent growth per annum is expected between 2013 and 2016. Between 2010 and 2016, a 29 percent growth was forecast in Middle East visitors to the US, with total annual visitor numbers likely to hit 951,000 by 2016, according to OTTI forecasts. One obstacle for visitors from the Middle East visiting the US is visa restrictions. In November it was it was reported Qatar has the highest success rate in the GCC for those applying for US tourism visas. Figures from the US Administration revealed that 96.8 percent of requests for US tourist visas made to the US embassy in Doha up to September 30 this year were accepted. The UAE had one of the highest rejection rates, with 9.7 percent of US tourist visa applications from the emirates not being accepted for travel. While Qatar had the lowest rejection rate in the Gulf, Kuwait came second and had a rejection rate of 2.6 percent. Bahrain had a rejection rate of 4.1 percent, six percent of Saudi applications were rejected and 8.7 percent of Omani applications did not make it. However, the GCC still performed better than Egypt, where the rejection rate was more than 30 percent, the report added.The countries with the highest rejection rates were Somalia (70 percent), followed by Djibouti (60.2 percent), Yemen (54.3 percent), Mauritania (49.7 percent) and Iraq (42.2 percent). From / Arabian Business News