Up to 41 million visitor arrivals and $45.4 billion in spending could be lost to Europe if delays under the European Union’s Entry/Exit System (EES) reach three hours, the World Travel & Tourism Council has warned.
The 9 June analysis lands as airports across the continent report queues of several hours just weeks before the peak summer season.
The research, based on a GSIQ survey of 2,512 travellers from the UK, US, Canada and Australia, found that around one-third would become much less likely to visit the Schengen Area, or would stay away altogether, if they faced regular border waits of three to four hours.
The figures come from applying those findings to 2026 visitor forecasts for the four markets, so they describe a scenario rather than a recorded loss.
British travellers are the most sensitive to delays. Some 39% of UK respondents said that they would be much less likely to travel under a three-hour-plus delay scenario, compared with 33% in the US and Canada and 27% in Australia.
Stabilisation could take two years
The warning follows an admission by the EU border agency, Frontex, that the system may take up to two years to settle.
“We expect the situation will stabilise in one or two years because the most challenging part is the first enrolment,” deputy executive director Uku Särekanno told an ABTA event in London.
First enrollment is the stage at which fingerprints and facial images are captured. Repeat visitors can be processed more quickly on subsequent trips.
Särekanno acknowledged that member states are “still adjusting to the new reality.” Some are coping well with dedicated resources, he noted, while “others are still struggling.”
He also criticised cases in which travellers were asked for fingerprints after their first visit, a requirement not mandated by the EES policy. Frontex is working to harmonise procedures across borders, he added, and hoped that the kinks would be ironed out by September.
The travel industry took little comfort from the timeline. ABTA chief executive Mark Tanzer described the two-year warning as “very painful”, while Airlines UK chief executive Tim Alderslade remarked: “I think we’ve got some work to do.”
Queues build at major gateways
The EES was progressively launched on 12 October 2025 and became fully operational on 10 April 2026. It replaces passport stamping for non-EU nationals across 29 European countries, recording passport details, entry and exit dates and biometric data.
Since May, congestion has been reported at airports in France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy and the Netherlands. Amsterdam Schiphol, Paris Charles de Gaulle, Lisbon and Frankfurt are among the hubs affected.
ACI Europe has recorded peak waiting times of up to three and a half hours. IATA cautions that some passengers could face waits of up to six hours during the summer.
The disruption is already costing passengers their flights. More than 100 people reportedly missed a Milan-to-Manchester departure after getting stuck in passport control, and Ryanair, easyJet and Jet2 have raised concerns about missed flights, disrupted schedules and higher operational costs.
The problems extend beyond airports. At the Port of Dover, French border authorities temporarily suspended certain biometric checks under Article 9 of the EES regulations after two-hour delays during the May half-term.
Greece had all but suspended checks for British citizens before recently scrapping that plan. In late May, its foreign ministry said that no specific nationalities were temporarily exempt from the procedure.
Wizz Air, meanwhile, has told British travellers to arrive three hours early for European flights.
Industry presses for contingency extension
Trade bodies want urgent fixes before the summer rush. ABTA and Airlines UK, alongside ACI Europe, ECTAA and North American counterparts, have written to every Schengen country, the European Commission and UK embassies.
Their demands cover the use of contingency measures to stand down checks at busy times, adequate border staffing, wider take-up of the Travel to Europe app and extended e-gate usage. Existing contingency rules that allow checks to be suspended expire in September.
ABTA and Airlines UK want that flexibility extended to the end of the IATA summer season in late October. Särekanno said there are no plans to extend the ability of countries to suspend EES processes during busy periods.
Tanzer warned that the rollout is “creating an unhelpful and potentially damaging backdrop for summer travel to EU destinations.” He urged destinations to use the available flexibility where queues are unacceptably long.
The WTTC has set out three priorities of its own:
- Faster adoption of the Travel to Europe app for pre-registration
- A coordinated communication campaign in the UK, US, Australia and Canada
- Operational readiness at all border crossing points.
ABTA pointed to inconsistent triaging of arrivals, for example, separating registered from unregistered passengers, and a lack of central coordination or sharing of best practices.
Travellers still back system
For all the disruption, support for the EES remains solid. The WTTC survey found that 65% of travellers back the system after learning about it, and only 6% are very negative towards biometric border controls.
Patience is also in evidence. Some 87% said that they would accept some disruption if future travel becomes smoother, and most respondents favour improving the rollout over abandoning it.
Travellers cited stronger border security (57%), quicker processing on future trips (52%) and greater confidence in border controls (43%) as the main benefits.
Awareness remains a weak point: 55% have heard little or nothing about the EES, and 49% do not know what will be required of them at the border.
WTTC president and CEO Gloria Guevara called the system “an important step forward” and argued that the challenge “is not whether EES should proceed” but how to smooth its implementation through pre-registration tools, better communication and operational readiness.
Summer becomes proving ground
The EES applies to non-EU nationals on short stays of up to 90 days in any 180-day period, and forms the foundation for the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS), the travel authorisation scheme due to start in the last quarter of 2026.
Prolonged delays could ripple through hotel check-ins, transfers, cruise embarkations, and onward connections, and corporate travellers may reconsider their routings if hold-ups become routine.
UK bookings for early summer have also been dampened by the Middle East conflict and the rising cost of living, according to Tanzer.
On the Beach chief executive Shaun Morton observed that shorter booking lead times make planning difficult, though he still expects the summer market to grow overall.
ABTA stressed that many travellers are still getting away with minimal disruption, and has called for a balanced, fact-based media approach that avoids scaremongering.
Whether the system can shed its queues before the peak season will decide if that reassurance holds.