Skift Take
The State Department’s passport processing sluggishness amid the American global tourist boom is an opportunity for Puerto Rico’s location marketing organization.
Dawit Habtemariam
Puerto Rico is releasing a new marketing campaign aimed at travelers who were required to postpone or cancel journeys because they couldn’t get their passport in time.
“No Passport, No Problem” will introduce next month and advise Americans that Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory– no passport required.
“About a third of Americans didn’t know that Puerto Rico doesn’t need a passport,” stated Leah Chandler, primary marketing officer for Discover Puerto Rico.
The project comes as the number of Americans traveling aboard surges. Over 46 million Americans took a trip abroad in the first 6 months of 2023, up 32% from the very same period in 2022, according to the National Travel and Tourism Workplace.
However the wait time to get a U.S. passport is between 10 and 13 weeks, an example of the federal government “stopping working” American travelers, said U.S. Travel CEO and President Geoff Freeman at Skift Global Online Forum.
No Passport, No Problem will include a landing page showing “must-knows” of travel to Puerto Rico and curated schedules for various types of tourists, marketing on social networks and partnerships with content developers and airlines, among which is Frontier Airlines. The project will be all made media.
Discover Puerto will also give away a couple of complimentary trips. Travelers can win by sharing their stories online with the hashtag #passportdelay. “Later on this fall we’re actually going to seek out people who have actually missed out on a vacation due to not getting their passport in time and we’re going to reward them with a journey to Puerto Rico,” stated Chandler.
In 2015, Puerto Rico’s travel and tourist sector produced $8.9 billion in income, up 39% from 2019.
There have actually been several high-profile occurrences demonstrating how lots of Americans are unaware Puerto Rico becomes part of the mainland, said Chandler. One viral incident had a Puerto Rican male being rejected a pre-paid appointment by Hertz on the U.S. mainland after employees said his driver’s license wasn’t valid.
UPGRADE– just got a call from @Hertz Executive Customer Care– Apologized for event & acknowledged that I should have never been needed to reveal a Passport -that my PR Driver’s License should have been accepted as a valid within the -which they will ensure … https://t.co/tqFS8Wobvh!.?.!— Bert Marchand Paonessa(@Moonrican1)Might 12, 2023 Puerto Rico’s federal government plans to include”Puerto Rico U.S.A.”to its driver licenses to avoid future incidents.