GUWonder

I think that his point was that the number is actually not all that high, and that ESTA-type fees from Americans won't amount to a whole lot of money. And he's completely correct on that.

I recall hearing something about 12 million mainland Chinese visitors entering Europe in 2015. I don't know what the formal number was in 2016; but in my limited experience in 2016 I saw more Chinese tourists than American tourists at a lot of Schengen area places -- a stark change from what I used to see a few years ago and before that.

And ordinary PRC/Chinese passport users don't get a visa waiver arrangement to visit the EU/Schengen area. They mainly have to get visas and get entered into VIS when flying into the Schengen area.

ESTA-type arrangements aren't put in place to make a lot of money. They are due to a segment of society being paranoid about who is entering (and even exiting) a country and having to balance that paranoia with the convenience and financial interests of the big money to be made from having convenient/inexpensive travel allowances to boost export revenues. Tourism money into a country is an export revenue source.

hfly

WilcoRoger, yes, and what does that have to do with what I was saying? GU has pretty much summed up what my point was.

BTW, Hungary had 12 million tourists? What 8 Million were Austrians making border "visits"?

WilcoRoger

Yes, GU summed up it well. I was not contemplating that much of the possible financial aspects for the governments involved rather the impact of a potential decrease of US visitors.

I don't have the breakdown of visitors by nationality to Hungary, but the country has been a strong inbound tourism country for a long time (not on the scale of Spain or France of course) I don't know if cross-border trips (dentist, shopping, whatnot) are counted, I'm not familiar with the methodology - but it's fair to suppose that there are more Austrian or German visitors than Chilean or Kenyan

hfly

And probably more than 3 million Austrian visitors who do not venture more than 500 meters inside Hungary, spend less than 2 hours and spend 50 Euros, the money which essentially is split between foreign criminal syndicates and "workers" who are often there illegally and from outside the EU anyway!

Not to mention about half a million a year who walk through the entire country without spending any money, and costing money (According to the Hungarian PM at least).

Hungary is a TERRIBLE example to make your point. BUD until recently had not had a Transatlantic flight for years, let alone anything from Asia or deep Africa, and saw about 11 million pax, which in ideal circumstances would portend no more than 5 million "foreign" visitors, and in reality far less.

Furthermore, you can't play the EU game of it all being "one country" for US visa purposes (which is the reason for this thread and subject), and then start talking about 12 million "foreign" visitors, when probably 95% of them come from other EU countries!............................and many come from as close as 100 meters away. The same applies to Greek numbers as well. Talk about visitors from OUTSIDE the European Union, when making comparisons, and then you are talking about something real. You cannot have it both ways.

WilcoRoger

I picked Hungary as it had the closest overall number of visitors to the number of US visitors to the EU (12 mill)

I don't see why not. Two totally different issues.

Also - could you substantiate these claims you make?

hfly

Uhhh, have you ever been to the border area(s) in Hungary near Austria? If you had, you would not be asking such questions. A little hint, its not dentistry people are coming for. Regarding airport numbers, they are easy to find, try Google. Regarding the rest, considering that you totally misunderstood what I wrote in post 103, I I guess you are just never going to get it, but you still cannot have it both ways. Using your rationale, Hungary has perhaps only 1 million tourists a year (plus the Syrians) as the other 11 million are all probably EU passport holders which does have the same equivalence for this subject as laid out.

Maluku_Flyer

And who's supposed to count those daytrippers at the border crossings?

I'm pretty sure that in most places only people staying at least one night are counted.

WilcoRoger

My point exactly, though I said explicitly that I don't know the methodology used.

@hfly - yes, I'm driving over Hungary's borders regularly, and I can see the difference between Turkish truckdrivers being serviced and Austrian tourists. But who am I to repeal one's prejudices and delusions?

hfly

No, numbers are not counted as staying one night, they are counted as entries. Entries are a funny thing especially when dealing with the US vs. Europe.

The US numbers are pretty hard. Except for two countries, Canada and Mexico, all entries are by air or sea, and in the case of Canada and Mexico, land entries are essentially discounted from the statistics.

The Hungarian tourism industry for mid to long term travelers is terrible. The country could not support a flag carrier nor long haul international flights. It is not a business hub either, and has one of the lowest rations of four to five star hotels in Europe.

Hungary, which incidentally is a VWP country, would not particularly suffer, as relative to its size, it has almost no long haul tourism. Not only does it have minimal US tourism, but has missed every mega trend in global tourism. The Japanese never came, and the Chinese are not coming.

They could not even sustain a national carrier. Nor flights to other continents. Yes it is that bad.

It in essence has become a Tijuana of central Europe, heading more to Bucharest levels than anything else, where 90% of its tourism, consists of day trippers from a less than 3 hour drive away.

I would love to see the value of a tourist to France, from anywhere vs. that of a tourist to Hungary. It would be interesting.

WilcoRoger

<deleted by moderator>, those who are interested in tourism to Hungary can find more than enough data here (2016 - preliminary)

http://szakmai.itthon.hu/documents/2...a-38c44a72c45f

Total number of overnight tourists: 9,5m
Total number of day-trippers: 6,1m
Grand total: 15,6 million

4,6 million guests at commercial lodgings, of which 1,27m non-EU guests.

As for the "flag carrier" stuff - MA went bankrupt after decades of plundering by politicians. W6 is doing well, thank you very much, with 77 aircraft in operation and a further 135 on order.

Nothing further to say.

hfly

Wizz Air may be Hungarian by name, but operates from something like 25 bases around Europe and the majority of their business occurs with both O/D outside of Hungary. Nice try though.

As far as your numbers, although I admit they have grown with the addition of day trippers, I note that the day trippers are in line with what I thought, and the 1.27 million non-EU "guests" is pretty much EXACTLY sport on as to what I noted in terms of non-EU travelers to Hungary.

Again, on cannot play both sides. If the argument is that all the EU is essentially one state (a position which the current Hungarian PM is vehemently against IIRC) then the current amount of tourists (from outside the EU) is less than 8.5% of the total, what did I estimate before??? It was 10% right, so I actually OVERSTATED the numbers.

To put it in perspective, and using your logic, that is what Orlando gets in a week.

GUWonder

What's the number of Chinese visitors who overnight in Budapest? What's the number of American visitors doing the same? Given how cheap Hungary is and how important Budapest has been historically, it's rather telling how poor Budapest/Hungary has done with attracting tourists from beyond Europe.

While the Chinese who travel abroad are not as sensitive to the hassle of having to get visas to travel to higher or lower income countries, US citizens are nowhere near as insensitive to visa hassles. The EC knows this means real money, and so the intra-European compromise position will end up being no physical visa requirement for most American visitors but an ESTA-type arrangement eventually. But it still won't get Poland, Romania and Bulgaria into the US VWP. Something else will be required well before that happens.

hfly

From the US, Hungary gets a whopping 200,000 visitors a YEAR of all stripes or approximately what the UK gets from the US in about 16 days, and what France gets in about 19 days, Italy is a similar amount. Should we go into nights spent and money spent? To put in in Perspective, just Scotland gets 2-3 times the US tourism as Hungary,

You sort of keep proving my point again and again.

catocony

Guys, the point is, general tourism for any given EU member is fairly irrelevant to this discussion. A better measure is how many Americans enter Schengen and the CTA each year. If there's any attempt at all for an apples to apples comparison to how many EU citizens enter the US each year, that's the only number that matters. Where we go once we first touch down isn't that important from an immigration standpoint.

The fact that two different immigration and customs areas exist within the EU, with one of them having non-EU members, is all the evidence needed to refute the claim that the entire EU should be treated as one entity for US immigration. Especially with some Schengen members re-instituting some light (sometimes heavy) border checks within that travel area.

WilcoRoger

For the last time - each and every country will look at the total number of incoming tourists (that's what their tourist industries live from) and how much a change in the number of US tourists would affect said tourist industries. Hoteliers in Budapest (or Paris or Amsterdam or Backofbeyond) don't give a flying <deleted> whether their rooms are paid by German or American tourist.

The visa issue is totally different, it's an EU level excercise of "teach them yanks a lesson in reciprocity" and member states might or might not accept it partly based on considerations above.