Tour companies and Caribbean resorts are taking a page from first-time homebuyer or car dealership incentives: Vacation discounts for Americans who get their first passport.

The impetus: American citizens will finally need a passport to travel to/from Mexico, Canada, and the Caribbean after December 31, 2006. (One year later for land crossings.) Readers from other countries may be asking, “What, Americans didn’t need a passport to travel to these places before??” Nutty, but true.

Giving a discount to people who didn’t previously have a passport is brilliant marketing, and it’s practically a public service. Less than a quarter of Americans currently have a passport — it wasn’t necessary within the region, after all — but that number will rise in coming years.

Info about U.S. passport applications can be found here. Order early.

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