There has been much debate and confusion about the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative and requirements for Passports when traveling outside of the US. So much so, many of the trade magazines that I subscribe to (Agent at Home, Travel Weekly, and Vacation Agent) have dedicated entire articles to keep us informed in an effort to keep our clients informed about what’s going on. Confusion about the program’s deadlines caused panicked travelers to swamp passport offices, which quickly became overwhelmed by a volume of passport applications for which officials were unprepared. Eventually relenting to all the backlash from both business travelers and those that would have to cancel personal vacations, a proposal was adopted and passed to let U.S. residents and citizens arriving at airports from travel in Canada, Mexico, Bermuda or the Caribbean region re-enter the United States if they could show they had simply applied for passports.

Initially, the drop dead date was January 1st, 2007, but when both the cruise industry, and US Government realized that literally millions of Americans still did not possess the proper Passport for travel outside of the US, our current Administration postponed the date until today, October 1st, 2007. If you are planning a trip outside of the country past today via air travel, you need to have a passport in hand in order to get back into this country if traveling outside of the US.

I have to admit, what they feared was true due to many of our clients applying for and waiting anywhere from 6 to 9 weeks, sometimes even longer for their passports to be processed and in the hands of our clients. The US Department of State experienced a backlog of some 18 Million applications being processed over the last several months and times have been very stressful both for us as Agents, and our clients who were traveling abroad.

If you find yourself stuck without realizing that you need a passport or yours has not arrived due to the backlog with everyone else scrambling you can have your Passports Expedited for a nominal charge.

As a Travel Agent I know there are still some loopholes when traveling outside of the US via land and sea ports right now, but that will soon change and as your travel agent, you should have one anyway, so do yourself a favor, put this whole mess behind you and get a passport for yourself and your family so that when you do have a chance to travel outside of the US, you’re ready.

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