Americans Warned to Plan Ahead for Passport Renewals Due to High Demand for International Travel

Americans planning to travel internationally this spring or summer are being warned to get their passport sorted as soon as possible, with turnaround times for a standard passport renewal currently taking between eight to 11 weeks, according to the State Department website. An expedited renewal application costs $60 more and takes five to seven weeks. Last year, the State Department processed a record 21,995,760 passports, nearly twice the number issued in 2020 or 2021, and up more than 67% compared to a decade earlier.

Demand for international travel is high and continues to rise. In a recent poll by tourism market research firm Destination Analysts, a third of US travelers said they are likely to take at least one international trip this year. Airbnb reports an increase in interest in international travel, with a list of top trending destinations that includes Rome, London, Porto and Barcelona as well as Seoul, South Korea.

James Ferrara, president and co-founder of InteleTravel, an online travel agency with a network of over 70,000 independent travel advisors across the US, UK, Mexico, and Caribbean, said demand for international travel has risen more than double from 2019 to 2022, with the first two months of 2023 showing a 35% increase over 2022. Ferrara attributed this to “the natural growth trajectory of the industry and the travel habits of younger generations,” as well as “pent-up demand, unspent travel dollars, bucket-list mentality, and the return of cruise and business travel.”

In February 2022, the State Department launched a limited-capacity online passport renewal portal for federal government employees and contractors. Six months later, the program was opened to the public, and more than 500,000 citizens successfully submitted an application online, according to a department official. However, the government temporarily paused its online passport renewal program earlier this month to “continue to make improvements to the customer experience,” and the program will be back online later in 2023, according to the official.

Forbes reports that the current backlog can be attributed to the unprecedented demand by American travelers for international trips, and that the country’s largest travel agencies are seeing the same trend. Virtuoso, whose 20,000 travel advisors make up the world’s largest luxury travel network, has reported that international hotel bookings for the first quarter of 2023 are already up 24% over the first quarter of 2022.