Passports: Information and Tips

by Clayton Trotter

This year in the travel industry seems to be a big year to travel abroad. Lots of clients want to take their families on the “trip of a lifetime”. Right now is the best time to travel. There are lots of deals out there and the travel advisors at Brownell are happy to help. There is one rule you MUST follow is you are going to travel abroad – you HAVE to have a passport.

I have worked in the travel industry for 3 years now and I am never surprised by some of the questions I get asked…the most recent being “Do I need a passport to go to Canada?”
Yes, you do. I know Canada is part of North America and borders the USA to the north. But Canada is an entirely different country than the US and if you want to go there, you’ve got to have a passport.

Getting a passport is actually really easy. You can contact your local travel advisor to help you or you can go to your local post office. The post office has several different passport forms – new passports, renewing passports, changing a name, etc. You will need to determine what type of form to fill out for your passport and then submit. The forms are extremely easy to understand and state exactly what you will need in order to get your passport. Adult passports are for people 16 and older. They don’t expire for 10 years. Children’s passports expire after 5 years. If your child has a passport and is under 16, be sure to check your child’s passport before traveling. A lot of people forget a child’s passport only lasts for 5 years and then are stuck running around like crazy trying to get it renewed. Believe it or not, babies also require a passport when traveling overseas. I know it seems crazy for a baby to have a passport that lasts for 5 years considering they look completely different from year to year. But if you plan a family vacation and a baby is going, they better have a passport.

For those of you reading this and don’t have a passport – go and get one! You never know when traveling abroad could arise and you want to be prepared. How awful would it be if you were offered to travel with your company to France for a week and you couldn’t go because you didn’t have a passport? One last thing to know about having a passport is that it must be valid 6 months AFTER you return from being out of the country. For instance, if you return back to the US after visiting Italy on June 6, 2009 your passport must be valid through December 6, 2009 or later. If it expires before then, go ahead and get it renewed before you trip. It’s better to spend the money getting it renewed then sitting at the airline gate and not being allowed on the plane.

For additional details, go to travel.state.gov for more passport and travel information, or you can contact any of our travel advisors!