Group ESTA application

Are you going on a journey to the USA with your family or a group of friends or business partners? The useful group ESTA application helps you to make your travel planning easier.

Before you can submit a group ESTA application, you must verify that all members of your travel group meet the necessary requirements to obtain ESTA authorization for the United States. The following criteria are relevant here:

The purpose of the travel must be the same for all members of your group ESTA application and must be allowed within the scope of the ESTA authorization.

You may submit a group ESTA application for the following purposes:

• Tourist travel
• Business appointments (meetings, conferences, etc.)
• Short-term training, advanced training, or seminars
• Medical treatments
• Transfer

With an ESTA, you are allowed to stay in the USA for a maximum of 90 days at a time. Make sure that none of your fellow travelers intends to stay longer in the USA. For stays exceeding 90 days, you will need a US visa that is suitable for the purpose of the journey.

ESTA travelers must be citizens of one of the 41 countries that are members of the Visa Waiver Program. If one or more people in your group have another citizenship, they cannot be included in the group ESTA application and must apply for a US visa.

The ESTA authorization is tied to a passport. Therefore, all travelers from your group must have a passport with sufficient validity. For citizens of Six Month Club countries, the passport must be valid until the last day of travel. Travelers from other countries should have a validity of at least six months beyond the planned date of departure.

With the practical group option, you can bundle the ESTA applications of up to 50 travelers into one application process. To do this, you need to follow these steps:

Each group ESTA application has a main applicant who is responsible for entering and submitting the relevant data. The main applicant creates the ESTA account and can manage and edit the application using a group ID.

The main applicant determines the number of travelers before he starts entering the data for the group ESTA application. He then first completes the entire application form for himself and proceeds with the data entry for all other persons by clicking on the blue button "Add travelers."

In a group ESTA application, each traveler must provide all data that is also asked for in a classic ESTA application for one person. This includes:

• Name
• Date of birth
• Nationality
• Gender
• Address
• E-mail address
• Telephone number
• Passport data
• National identity number
• Names of the parents
• Employer information and contact details
• Information about memberships in Trusted Traveler programs
• First overnight address in the US, including contact information
• Information on social media profiles (optional)

Besides entering the necessary information, the main applicant must also submit a copy of the data page of each group member's passport. You can easily upload it in the form of an image file (jpg, png, or gif) within the online form. When uploading the pages, make sure that the passports have sufficient validity.

The ESTA form includes a series of security questions that you must answer truthfully for each traveler in your group application. The security questions are related to health status, criminal history, and previous travel to countries considered to be high-risk by the US authorities.

If a person answers "yes" to at least one of the security questions in your group ESTA application, he or she will not be eligible for an ESTA and must apply for a US visa instead.

Check that all information has been entered correctly and in its entirety before submitting the group ESTA application. Incorrect or incomplete information due to small oversights can already lead to your ESTA application being rejected.

A big advantage of the group ESTA application is that you can make the payment for all travelers at once. ESTA costs vary from $ 21 per person if you fill out the application yourself on the US authorities' website to an average of € 50 per person if you take advantage of the assistance of an ESTA agency. There are no group discounts.

After you have completed the group ESTA application, you will automatically be directed to the payment process. You can pay the fee either by credit card (MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover) or PayPal. With ESTA agencies like The American Dream, you also have other payment options, e.g., Giropay, Apple Pay, EPS, or Sofortüberweisung.

The processing time for your group ESTA application is a maximum of 72 hours. Make sure you submit the application well in advance of your departure so that you do not jeopardize your entry into the USA.

There are various reasons for the rejection of an ESTA application. However, if one person from your ESTA group application receives a rejection, it does not jeopardize the entire group’s travel. Only the person who does not meet the ESTA requirements cannot benefit from visa-free travel with ESTA and must apply for a US visa.