America’s decision to set up two new consulates ~ in Bengaluru and Ahmedabad ~ in addition to consular services it already offers at New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Hyderabad, will prove to be a boon to Indian travellers. But the decision, announced during the Prime Minister’s visit to the United States, is guided as much by Washington’s need to further bilateral ties as it is to feather its own nest. Last year, India generated Asia’s highest outbound travel volumes, overtaking China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Nearly two-thirds of those who travelled outside the country were on holiday and leisure tourism is always more lucrative for host countries. Only Dubai attracted more Indians than the United States did. Travel to American destinations more than 12,000 km away exceeded that to countries in the vicinity such as Thailand, Saudi Arabia and Singapore. Indians made up the third highest group of foreign visitors to America.

These facts, brought out in a report by an international travel consultancy, would not be unknown to the Americans. They would similarly know that travel plans of Indians to the United States are increasingly frustrated by the slow pace of visa processing, with wait times of 337 days reported in April this year. With the prospect of earning nearly Rs 12,000 from each visa issued, with US airlines such as American, Delta and United hoping to pick up a chunk of the traffic, and with trips to the US being of longer duration than to those in the vicinity, there are spin-off benefits that the Americans cannot possibly ignore.

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Indeed, American Airlines had returned to India after nearly a decade in 2021 after seeing the potential for business. Data from the US Department of Commerce’s National Travel and Tourism Office shows that travel from India to America has crossed pre-pandemic levels in the first five months of this year, and the Americans have issued 44 per cent more visas to Indians this year than they did in the same period in 2019, the year before the pandemic struck. On the other hand, India last year drew the third highest number of foreign visitors in Asia. Driven largely by the need of members of the Indian diaspora to visit relatives and aging parents after the Covid years, most visitors to India were from the United States, followed by the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates. Thus, adequate provision of consular services to their own nationals would also have been a factor that helped the Americans decide to open additional consulates. The outlook for the rest of 2023 looks just as promising, with a 26 per cent jump projected in travel from India to the United States. It is not surprising therefore that the Americans have decided to up their consular game.