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Horizon Zero Dawn Fast Travel - how to get the Golden Fast Travel Pack for unlimited fast travel

How and where to get your hands on the hugely useful Golden Fast Travel Pack.

Fast Travel in Horion Zero Dawn works a little differently to the standard method we've come to expect from open-world adventure games.

Unlike most, it's limited, relying on Fast Travel Packs - items carried by Aloy - in order to work. However, there is a way to unlock that mechanic and grant unlimited fast travel to any discovered Campfire, thanks to the Golden Fast Travel Pack .

So, exactly how does fast travel work , how do you get the Golden Fast Travel Pack , and how exactly do you unlock unlimited fast travel in Horizon Zero Dawn ? All of that is explained here in our guide, below.

How does fast travel work in Horizon Zero Dawn?

Fast Travel in Horizon Zero Dawn revolves around Campfires or, more specifically, Campfires you've already visited.

You don't have to have saved at them or even interacted with them, just have got close enough to have the text pop up on screen that it's been discovered. From then on, you'll be able to fast travel to that location, provided you have one other thing: a Fast Travel Pack.

In the early stages of the game, these are found from certain vendors or, if you're lucky maybe a random crate or slain human enemy.

These Packs act as one-time-use consumables, meaning you'll need to stock up, at a fair bit of expense to both your time and Metal Shards, if you want to fast travel often - and as the game progresses, you probably do.

How to get the Golden Fast Travel Pack in Horizon Zero Dawn

Enter, the Golden Fast Travel Pack. Narratively unexplained but nonetheless incredibly useful, this pack will let you travel an unlimited number of times, without worrying about stocking up your inventory.

It's obtained from a number of Traders around the world of Horizon, although for the record we sourced ours from the merchant just outside Meridian, by the big bridge leading into the city.

How much does the Golden Fast Travel Pack cost? Well, it's relatively cheap:

• 50 Metal Shards - obtained from all kinds of sources but, most commonly, from slain machines or selling items to merchants.
• 1 Fox Skin - somewhat harder, although far from impossible, to obtain. This drops randomly from wild Foxes you can hunt anywhere on the map. Forresty areas are generally the best, and we found one after only killing a handful, so it shouldn't take you long.
• 10 Fatty Meat - this, again, is quite easy to find. It comes from any wild animal you can hunt, so you can normally pick some up from a quick trip into the wild where you can hunt Boar, Turkey, and Fox at your will.

For more tips, explainers and advice on Horizon be sure to check out our main Horizon Zero Dawn guide and walkthrough hub, which includes advice for things like Horizon Zero Dawn's override Cauldrons and which machines they let you control, getting hold of the Golden Fast Travel Pack for unlimited fast travel , finding and unlocking the very powerful Horizon Zero Dawn Shield Weave Armour and Power Cell locations , and then for DLC players there's our main Horizon Zero Dawn Frozen Wilds walkthrough and guide , a page on how to earn Bluegleam quickly , and finally, a page on the handy A Secret Shared quest and how to upgrade your spear in Horizon Frozen Wilds .

Once you have the required items, simply head to a general goods merchant, and it can be found at the bottom of the 'Resources' tab, shaded in purple for Very Rare.

That's all you need to know in terms of fast travel, but for more tips and tricks, take a look at our hub page, featuring a complete Horizon Zero Dawn walkthrough and guide for the main story, as well as our guide to all Power Cell locations for the secret Shield-Weave armour , too.

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Horizon Zero Dawn: How to Fast Travel

Horizon Zero Dawn is a massive, sprawling game that requires a lot of travel, and as such, knowing how to fast travel can save players a lot of time.

Horizon Zero Dawn was released for PlayStation 4 in 2017 and PC in late 2020. With each release, players were floored by the sheer size of the map and the various biomes that accompanied them in Horizon Zero Dawn . But when a map is that large, the problem of quickly navigating it can hamper any game, no matter how great the rest of it is.

Fortunately, like many titles of its ilk, Horizon Zero Dawn and its DLC make use of a fast travel system. So, for players that eventually grow weary of traveling the vast landscape with its haunting beauty, they can take a break from the sights and quickly zip from one objective to the next.

RELATED: How Horizon Forbidden West's Bristlebacks May Have Evolved From Behemoths

How to Fast Travel

Fast travel around Aloy's post-apocalyptic wonderland is done via campfires. After finding the location of a campfire, its marker on the map (depicted as two crossed sticks with a flame above) will turn from white to green. So long as Aloy is close enough to the campfire, they can open the map to fast travel to any other discovered campfires. There aren't any restrictions on fast traveling, and there are no components needed to use it. So long as a player has found the campfire they want to travel to, they will be able to.

In addition to allowing Aloy to traverse the map quickly, campfires also serve as a point to save the game through either quick or manual saves. Merchants can also be typically found by campfires, and medicinal plants can often be found growing in abundance near campfires in the wilderness. While save spots or rooms will typically protect the player in other games, this is not the case in Horizon Zero Dawn . Dangerous machines can and will spawn near campfires and even wander toward them. However, players can exploit campfires as saving at one and reloading the came will completely restore Aloy's health.

As mentioned before, Horizon Zero Dawn is a gigantic game densely packed with all sorts of secrets, collectibles, harvestable items, and dangerous machines. Fully exploring it will take dozens of hours to complete, and using the campfires to fast-travel will save a lot of time.

Horizon Zero Dawn is available now for PC, PS4, and PS5.

MORE: Horizon Zero Dawn: GAIA and HADES Explained

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Forza Horizon 5 How to Fast Travel Anywhere

In Forza Horizon 5 Fast Travel is a perk that you have to earn.  In this case, if you want absolute freedom to travel anywhere you’re going to need to pay for it.  This perk might be easy to miss, so in this guide we’re going to explain exactly where to get the ability to fast travel anywhere in Forza Horizon 5 and how much it costs to unlock.

How to Fast Travel Anywhere in Forza Horizon 5

As Forza Horizon progresses you’ll get the ability to purchase homes across the map.  Some have different benefits than others.  If your sole intentions is to get the option to fast travel anywhere in the game that you’re going to want to put down the cash for the Buenas Vistas home.  The reward for purchasing this seaside estate is the ability to travel to any road on the map + 2 Super Wheelspins.  The only downside is that it’s going to cost 2 million credits.

One thing to consider is that even though you have the ability to fast travel anywhere it’ll still cost you credits.

If the Buenas Vistas house isn’t yet available on your map, you’ll want to make sure that you’ve unlock the Horizon Festival in the Baja Region.

If you truly want unfettered access to traveling across the map you’re going to want to put some time into the game and find the Fast Travel boards.  Each time you smash one of these boards you will earn a discount on fast travel.  Hit them all and Fast Travel will be free.  Combine that with the Buenas Vistas player house and you’ll be able to fast travel anywhere at anytime for nothing.

That’s everything you need to know about fast travel in Forza Horizon 5.  Check out our recent review for the game or our Forza Horizon Guide Hub for more guides like this.

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Horizon Zero Dawn: How to Fast Travel

With the release of Horizon Zero Dawn  — Complete Edition on PC, players are jumping into one of the best open worlds of the generation for the first time (or again after playing it on PS4). That said, you’ll probably want to fast travel around the world to make better use of your time. 

In Horizon , fast travel works a little differently than you might expect, so in this guide, we’ll walk you through everything you’ll need to know. Keep in mind, fast traveling works the same, whether you’re on PC or PS4 . 

How to Fast Travel in Horizon Zero Dawn

To fast travel, open your map and hover over one of the green Campfires scattered around the world. On PS4, you can press “R2” while hovering on it to fast travel.

For PC, it works the same, but obviously, if you’re using a different gamepad or mouse and keyboard, the input will be something different than “R2.” The map menu itself will tell you which button or key to press.  

When you do press the Travel button, a small menu will appear, letting you know fast traveling costs 1x Fast Travel Pack . This is to eliminate the ability to simply zip around the map with ease —  at least at first. If you don’t have a Fast Travel Pack, you can’t fast travel.

How to Get a Fast Travel Pack

Fast Travel Packs can be acquired in a couple of ways. Either you can purchase one from a merchant with the following materials:

• 2 Metal Shards
• 15 Ridge-Wood
• 1 Rich Meat

Or you can construct them yourself with:

• 1 Fatty Meat
• 1 Bony Meat

Both are effective  — just make sure you take a look at your resources to determine which will work best for you. For us, it was much easier to simply trade with a merchant than to try and make one ourselves, due to the availability of the required materials. 

We do recommend that you at least have one set of resources on hand to make one yourself, just in case you get caught in a spot in which you’d need to fast travel. You’ll be annoyed if you run out of packs and the materials needed to craft one, even if exploring Horizon  is a fun and rewarding experience.

There is one other way to fast travel towards the latter portion of the game, and it grants you unlimited uses. For this, you’ll need the Golden Fast Travel Pack .

Golden Fast Travel Pack

To acquire the Golden Fast Travel Pack, you have to purchase it from a merchant in Meridian City , but it will only be available once you’ve reached the “ Into the Borderlands ” quest.

It will cost:

• 50 Metal Shards
• 10 Fatty Meats

If you’ve explored thoroughly and taken the time to hunt animals, you’ll probably already have the 50 Metal Shards and the 10 Fatty Meats needed to purchase the pack. If not, Metal Shards are found on the corpses of machines, while Fatty Meats are best acquired from killing wild boars. Though, many animals will reward you with Fatty Meats, so keep hunting, and you’ll get 10 in no time.

The real challenge will be in locating and acquiring Fox Skin . It’s best to search for foxes in green areas of the map that contain grass . You can click in “R3” on PS4 to easily locate animals around you.

Do note that the Fox Skin won’t immediately drop for you. It’ll take several tries, but eventually, a fox will drop the skin. Luckily, you only need one. 

That’s everything you need to know about fast travel in Horizon Zero Dawn , including how to get various travel packs. For more on HZD , please visit its hub page here . 

How to unlock fast travel in Forza Horizon 5

You can reduce your fast travel costs, too. Here's how.

If you're wondering how to unlock fast travel in Forza Horizon 5, or you want to cut down on those fast travel expenses, you've come to the right place. Part of the joy of Forza is driving around and exploring all the map has to offer, but there are times when you might prefer to fast travel to certain events. 

If you're here in preparation for the official release on November 9, here are the unlock times . Alternatively, our Forza Horizon 5 cars list makes for good browsing while you wait. But if you're ready to get stuck in, here's how to unlock fast travel in Forza Horizon 5 and cut down on the overall cost. 

Forza Horizon 5 fast travel: How to unlock and travel anywhere 

When you first start out, fast travel is limited. You can fast travel to houses you own as well as specific festivals. If you're unsure how to go about buying a house, drive to the property you have your eye on and 'view' it—if there's no option to buy, you may need to unlock events in the area first. Other than that, you'll need to drive there the old-fashioned way—at the beginning, at least.

To unlock the ability to fast travel anywhere on the map, you need to fork out a tidy 2 million credits for the Buenas Vistas property in the Baja region . It is a lot, but this will let you fast travel to any road on the map.

To access the house, you need to unlock the Horizon Festival in the Baja region before the option will show up.

How to fast travel for free in Forza Horizon 5 

The price of fast travel can add up quickly, and you might find yourself struggling to keep up with costs if you fast travel too much. Luckily, there are a couple of ways you can fast travel for free.

You can set one of the properties you own as Home , which allows you to fast travel to that location at no cost.

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The second option is to break any Fast Travel boards you find . Each one will permanently reduce your fast travel cost, and getting all 50 will reduce your travel costs to zero. These Fast Travel boards are marked on the map by a purple icon with a white lightning symbol. 

<a href="https://www.pcgamer.com/forza-horizon-5-barn-find-locations-map/" data-link-merchant="pcgamer.com"" target="_blank"> Forza Horizon 5 Barn Finds : Map and locations <a href="https://www.pcgamer.com/forza-horizon-5-fast-travel-boards-unlock-free/" data-link-merchant="pcgamer.com"" data-link-merchant="pcgamer.com"" target="_blank"> Forza Horizon 5 fast travel : How to unlock it

Sarah started as a freelance writer in 2018, writing for PCGamesN, TechRadar, GamingBible, Red Bull Gaming and more. In 2021, she was offered a full-time position on the PC Gamer team where she takes every possible opportunity to talk about World of Warcraft and Elden Ring. When not writing guides, most of her spare time is spent in Azeroth—though she's quite partial to JRPGs too. One of her fondest hopes is to one day play through the ending of Final Fantasy X without breaking down into a sobbing heap. She probably has more wolves in Valheim than you.

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Forza Horizon 5 - All Fast Travel Boards

All 50 Fast Travel Bonus Boards found in Forza Horizon 5. Each board you smash reduces your Fast Travel cost by 200 CR.

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Dragon’s Dogma 2 has next to no fast travel and that rules, actually

You can climb that mountain, but have you thought about the hike back down?

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If you just started Dragon’s Dogma 2 , it might have come as a shock that this sprawling open-world, role-playing epic is missing one common feature: fast travel. Well, it’s not quite missing, but it’s extremely limited in ways that run counter to the normal rhythms of this hugely popular genre.

The way it usually works in open-world games is this: You set forth on an adventure, heading out to unexplored regions. As you explore, you unlock fast travel points that make it easy to return to those areas. It takes a matter of seconds to get back to town when you need to rest, shop, or turn in quests. Even in games that prioritize organic exploration and discovery — like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom — fast travel is available, and usually free. It’s just accepted as a necessary addition to make these huge game worlds manageable.

Dragon’s Dogma director Hideaki Itsuno and his team at Capcom feel differently about it. In keeping with the many ways Dragon’s Dogma 2 intentionally makes your life difficult — restricting game saves to prevent save-scumming, for example — the approach to fast travel puts realism and immersion over convenience.

There are, in fact, three automatic travel options in the game: oxcarts, ropeways, and Portcrystals . Most wouldn’t really call oxcarts fast travel since they’re painfully slow, only run along a few set routes between towns, and, although you can nap to pass the time, your journey might be interrupted by bandit or monster attacks. Ropeways come with their own hazards , as they’re subject to aerial attack — and it’s a long way down.

Portcrystals resemble traditional fast travel, but with a couple of huge caveats. You need to use a Ferrystone to warp to one, and these are a very rare and precious resource. There are only a handful of Portcrystals in major locations across the entire game. If you can obtain your own Portcrystal you can place it wherever you like, but these items are rarer still.

All this means that during general play, fast travel is out, either because it’s too expensive or too inconvenient. You’re going to have to make your way on foot, and it’s going to take time — especially considering that nighttime hikes are inadvisable, so you’re encouraged to make camp for the night. Sounds tedious, right? Why did Capcom design the game this way?

The answer Itsuno has given in interviews is the one designers often give when they explain why they’ve chosen to cut back on travel convenience. To paraphrase: It’s about making sure players spend their time out in the world discovering stuff. “We’ve put a lot of work into designing a game where you can stumble across someone and something will happen, so while it’s fine if it does have fast travel, we decided to design the map in a way that the journey [itself] could be enjoyed,” Itsuno told IGN ,

It’s true that Dragon’s Dogma 2 has an unusually dense map that’s teeming with activity and primed for all sorts of random happenstance — even more so than the recent Zeldas. The more players zip themselves from point to point across this dynamic anecdote-generation machine, the less opportunity there would be for the unexpected discoveries and events that make the game so memorable, whether it’s a fight with an accident-prone cyclops or crossing paths with a pawn who might change your life. But, in truth, Itsuno only gave half an answer.

Yes, open-world games like this should be about the journey. But most of them are specifically about the journey of discovery. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is also about the return journey, making your way back, often by a different route to see what else you can find. It’s about conserving your resources, balancing the risk and reward of exploration, thinking about how much you can carry, and keeping a wary eye on the sun as it descends toward the horizon.

I love this stuff. I love anything that makes me feel present in the world the developers have created and that makes distances feel real. I love games that resist the habit of optimizing time spent playing them ; that, with a gentle but firm hand, encourage the player to just live in the moment, immersed in their adventure, rather than to play with one eye on a to-do list.

Travel is a hugely important part of interaction with game worlds — both practically and emotionally — so I get why Itsuno and his team pushed back against the impulse to skip it. Even though fast travel is easy in Spider-Man 2 , my son never uses it because he just loves web-slinging so much. (You should see him go soaring and pirouetting through New York City — it’s poetry in motion.) I know many people were bored by the long, featureless sailing trips of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker , but those moments of wind-blown calm, scored by the quiet rushing of the waves against the hull of Link’s little boat, are some of my most treasured gaming memories, a permanent happy place. Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding makes a whole game out of packing your bag and going for a hike, and its rugged landscape is the only other character that game really needed.

I don’t think World of Warcraft would have become half the sensation it did were it not for its approach to travel. When building the MMO two decades ago, Blizzard insisted that there would be no loading screens breaking up its huge landmasses, and that — with the exception of a Hearthstone item that would take you back to the inn of your choice on a one-hour cooldown — the only way to cross its distances would be to fly across them in real time by air taxi, watching the landscape scroll past below. In theory, this was dead time; while in the air, you couldn’t do anything but chat to your friends. But it was one of the things that made that world feel so real.

Restricting fast travel isn’t the only way to foster this kind of relationship with a game world, but it’s one of the most effective. And, for Dragon’s Dogma 2 , it was the right one. (Personally, I would have cut the Portcrystals completely; they don’t feel like they fit the world, and introducing fast travel only to make it awkward and expensive is a bit too contrarian. The lumbering oxcarts and treacherous ropeways fit right in, though.) Capcom’s game is a capricious, random, surprising, brilliantly conceived adventure simulator, and one of the few games to recognize that adventures are about the journey home home as well as heading out. If it had allowed you to warp back at the end of a quest, it would simply have cut itself in half.

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‘Winners and Losers’ as $20 Fast-Food Wage Nears in California

The nation’s highest state minimum wage for fast-food workers takes effect on Monday. Owners and employees are sizing up the potential impact.

By Kurtis Lee

Reporting from Lancaster, Calif.

A decade ago, Jamie Bynum poured his life savings into a barbecue restaurant now tucked between a Thai eatery and a nutrition store in a Southern California strip mall.

As a franchise owner of a Dickey’s Barbecue Pit, Mr. Bynum is pridefully particular about the details of his establishment — the size of the hickory wood pile on display near the entrance, the positioning of paper towel rolls on each table, the careful calibration it takes to keep his restaurant staffed 10 hours a day with a small crew.

The staffing, he said, has become harder in recent years, as the state’s minimum wage has steadily increased since 2017, often rising by a dollar per year. Today, it’s $16 an hour.

But on Monday, it will jump to $20 an hour for most fast-food workers in California, propelling them to the top of what minimum-wage earners make anywhere in the country. (Only Tukwila, Wash., a small city outside Seattle, sets the bar higher, with a minimum wage of $20.29 for many employees.)

The ambitious law, which supporters hope to see replicated nationwide, has been characterized by opposing sides in stark terms. To backers, it is a step toward fair compensation for low-wage workers who faced significant risk during the pandemic. To opponents, it is a cataclysmic move that will raise food prices, lead to job losses and force some franchisees to consider closing.

“People don’t understand that when wages rise, so do the prices,” Mr. Bynum said.

Mr. Bynum has, in recent years, raised prices to try to maintain profit margins — and each time, he said, he has noticed a drop in customers. That, in turn, forced painful decisions about cutting staffing and trimming hours.

The new minimum wage will add $3,000 to $4,000 to his monthly expenses, he said, and while he hopes to keep all eight of his employees, he doesn’t know if he can make the numbers add up.

One employee, Josue Reyes, has worked at the restaurant on and off over the past decade.

He works the evening shift, often taking the bus and then riding his hybrid bike the rest of the way to the restaurant. Mr. Reyes, 35, said the consistent pay raises through the years — he now makes $16 an hour — had helped him significantly. He puts much of his paycheck toward assisting his mother pay the rent at their trailer park and tries to save where he can.

While another pay increase will help him, Mr. Reyes, who has worked in fast food for much of his life, said he feared that before long, jobs would become more competitive and harder to keep.

“There can be job losses because restaurants close,” he said on a recent weekday, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt for his shift. “No one wants that, but it seems very possible.”

The potential ripple effects of the law weighed by Mr. Bynum and Mr. Reyes at this fast-food restaurant in Lancaster, a high desert city at the northern edge of Los Angeles County, mirror conversations that will play out across the state as owners and employees — and eventually consumers — adjust to the new reality.

Championed by powerful labor organizations, including the Service Employees International Union, the law will lift pay for more than half a million California employees who work for fast-food chains with 60 or more locations nationwide. It also creates a council comprising, among others, workers, franchise owners and union representatives who will oversee future increases to the minimum wage and devise workplace standards.

In an interview, Mary Kay Henry, president of the S.E.I.U., said the law was long overdue. “We are talking about a billion-dollar industry that can and should afford this raise,” she said, noting that most workers are Black and Latino. “Raising pay improves employers’ ability to hire and retain workers.”

The potential beneficiaries include Anna Velazquez-Cruz, who has worked at a Papa Johns in the East Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles for a year.

Ms. Velazquez-Cruz, 19, lives with relatives in an apartment a short walk from the shop, where she makes around $18 an hour. “The internet bills, the rent, it gets higher,” she said on a recent evening.

But Matt Haller, president of the International Franchise Association, said he expected the new law to significantly harm many small businesses.

“Local restaurants will face hundreds of thousands of dollars in increased operating costs,” Mr. Haller said. “Customers will face higher food prices, and restaurant owners will have to cut costs to keep their doors open.”

Economists are divided over the merits and pitfalls.

Ismael Cid-Martinez, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank partly funded by labor unions, said the law would help lift wages for workers in other low-paying industries in the state.

“These workers are also consumers,” he said. “Any increase in earnings for them means additional resources that they use to feed their families, bolster small businesses and strengthen their state economy.”

David Neumark, a professor of economics at the University of California, Irvine, said the impact would be more nuanced. “A higher minimum wage creates winners and losers,” he said.

The winners will be workers who keep their jobs and at most have a modest reduction in hours, he said, while the losers will be those whose hours are substantially cut or who lose their jobs — along with smaller franchise owners who were already struggling to make much of a profit.

“They make more than minimum-wage workers,” he said. “But lots of them are not high-income.”

That is the case for Mr. Bynum, whose path to franchise ownership started with a career change 10 years ago.

He and his wife, Liza, who both then worked in the information technology sector, noticed a dearth of barbecue restaurants near their home in Lancaster and used all of their $150,000 in savings to open a Dickey’s Barbecue Pit.

The chain, based in Dallas, operates more than 400 restaurants, and Mr. Bynum said he pays 9 percent in royalties to the headquarters. He has cut his staff by half over the past decade and trimmed hours. He has raised prices: A loaded baked potato cost $8 when he opened; now it’s almost $20 when ordering at the restaurant.

That’s a significant increase for his customers in Lancaster, a city 70 miles north of downtown Los Angeles where about 15 percent of residents live at or below the poverty line — and where higher pay and higher costs will both be keenly felt.

Most days in recent years, Mr. Bynum and his wife have run the restaurant with help from their two adult children.

“What started as a dream has slowly faded,” Mr. Bynum said.

Joe Marques is another owner wondering how to navigate the months ahead.

He became the owner of a Wienerschnitzel restaurant in San Jose, Calif., in the early 1990s and now has two other locations in the area. He employs around 45 people at the three stores combined. As an owner, he said, he is surviving week to week and has little money for capital improvements, such as repaving parking lots and painting.

“There is a lot of perception that we are a big corporation simply because of the name,” he said. “In reality, I am essentially an independent small-business owner.”

At current staffing levels — 60 percent of his employees work full time, the others part time — it will cost him an additional $4,500 to $5,000 a month per store to remain open, he said. Mr. Marques, 64, had wanted to permanently hand his businesses over to his son. That hope, he said, seems more and more fleeting these days.

“It’s not like we are getting rich on this,” he said. “We are trying to make a living.”

For Mr. Reyes, the longtime Dickey’s employee, his job has given a sense of stability that he worries may soon shatter.

He likes that the job is close to home, Mr. Reyes said, so someone in his family can pick him up and he can avoid taking a late-night bus. While welcoming the higher pay that the law will mandate, he expressed sympathy about the financial strain on Mr. Bynum.

“There has been a type of companionship,” he said. “He’s given me consistent work.”

What Mr. Bynum sees on the horizon concerns him. For months, he and his wife have thought about what they might do next — perhaps, he said, go back to I.T. — but he fears his options would be limited. At 51, he’s not sure who would hire him. He worries, too, about what would happen to Mr. Reyes and his other employees.

“We’re all in this as a team,” he said. “I care about my people and have given people a lot of opportunities over the years.”

And singling out the fast-food industry for a higher minimum wage, Mr. Bynum said, “all just seems targeted and like an attack.”

“I am a small-business owner at the end of the day,” he added, “just scraping along.”

Kurtis Lee is an economics correspondent based in Los Angeles who focuses on the lives and livelihoods of everyday Americans. He has written about income inequality for nearly a decade. More about Kurtis Lee

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As international travel grows, so does US use of technology. A look at how it’s used at airports

Piet De Staercke, from back right to left, with his wife Jill Bornauw, their eldest son Stan De Staercke, watch their youngest Tuur de Staercke, get screened by a Custom Border Protection officer, right, in the port of entry at Washington Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Va. Monday, April 1, 2024. The Belgian family of four, used the Mobile Passport Control app, the newest technology in international travel, to ease their way to their port of entry. Within minutes they had bypassed a long line of people waiting at the airport’s passport control and were waiting for their luggage. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

International travelers not using the Mobile Passport Control app, stop and use the portal to get their initial processing and instructions on their next procedure, in the port of entry at Washington Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Va. Monday, April 1, 2024. A Mobile Passport Control app user can bypass this procedure and go straight to a Custom Border Protection officer for processing easing their way to the port of entry. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

A Custom Border Protection officer, right, puts his thumb up as Tuur de Staercke, left, gets screened in the port of entry as his family watches at Washington Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Va. Monday, April 1, 2024. The Belgian family of four, used the Mobile Passport Control app, the newest technology in international travel, to ease their way to their port of entry. Within minutes they had bypassed a long line of people waiting at the airport’s passport control and were waiting for their luggage. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

International travelers go down the escalator to get processed at the port of entry at Washington Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Va. Monday, April 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Belgian family of four was on their fourth trip to the United States. They had been dreading the long line at passport control when they entered the country but had heard about a new app they could use to ease their way and decided to give it a shot. Within minutes, they had bypassed the long line at Washington Dulles International Airport and were waiting for their luggage.

“It was always a long row,” said Piet De Staercke of the line to go through passport screening. He, his wife and two sons were visiting Washington and Chicago. “We were a bit scared. But now with the app, it’s amazing.”

As travel continues to boom following coronavirus pandemic-related slumps, U.S. Customs and Border Protection is expanding the use of technology like the Mobile Passport Control app the De Staercke family used in an effort to process the ever-growing number of passengers traveling internationally. And with events like a rare solar eclipse , the Olympics in Paris, and summer holidays still driving international travel, those numbers don’t look set to drop anytime soon.

Customs and Border Protection officials gave The Associated Press a behind-the-scenes look at some of the technologies they’ve been using and what to expect in the months and years ahead.

THE NUMBERS

During fiscal year 2023, the agency processed over 394 million travelers at the ports of entry. That’s a 24% increase over the previous year. When looking at the country’s top 20 airports by passenger volume, officers processed 31% more travelers while average wait times increased 11%. And at some of the busiest airports, the wait times have had negligible increases or even decreased. At JFK Airport in New York, for example, wait times went down — by 0.4 of a second on average — while CBP officers processed 33% more travelers.

Increasingly, people are traveling internationally with their families rather than going abroad alone for business.

Officials are moving more toward app-based technologies to speed passengers’ movement through the airport. The Mobile Passport Control app used by the Belgian family is one example. It’s available to U.S. citizens, but also to lawful permanent residents, certain Canadians and travelers from countries who are part of the Visa Waiver Program who’ve already been to the U.S. at least once.

Passengers upload their photos and information to the app. When they enter the screening area, they get routed to a separate line. The officer then just needs to take a photo of one member of the family and it pulls up the entire group’s photos and their information.

CBP launched the app in 2021 but is now trying to get more people to use it, including by working with airlines to allow the app to be downloaded while the plane is in flight and putting up signs at airports to let travelers know about it. Last year, a record 4.1 million people came into the country using the app.

“Any second that we can save through the process, it saves time because it adds up eventually,” said Marc Calixte, the top CBP official at Dulles.

Last September, the agency also created an app specifically for passengers who use Global Entry. That’s one of the “Trusted Traveler” programs CBP runs that allows certain low-risk passengers who make an appointment for an interview and submit to a background check to travel through customs and passport control more quickly when they arrive in the U.S.

IMPROVEMENTS TO GLOBAL ENTRY

Last year saw a record 3.2 million people apply to the Global Entry program, and this year the agency is on track to field about 4 million applications, said Brendan Blackmer, CBP branch chief for the Trusted Traveler Programs. But passengers have complained about how long it can take to get applications processed and their struggles to get appointments. On its website, CBP says it averages four to six months to process applications. In February, 17 members of Congress wrote to CBP demanding information, saying they were fielding complaints from constituents over the wait times.

Blackmer said the agency has pushed to improve the process, including by allowing nearly 100% of people renewing their status to do so without having to come into an enrollment center. That frees up appointments for first-time applicants. And it’s pushing for more people to be able to complete the process while they’re in the airport, either leaving or returning from a trip.

There are also more appointments available, Blackmer said, although some cities like San Francisco are still seeing so much demand that appointments can take more than 90 days to get.

“We’ve done a lot of work the past year and a half, and the agency’s in a better position now and able to meet the demand for the program. And we’re going to continue to work,” Blackmer said.

FEE INCREASES

Come Oct. 1, people using some of the Trusted Traveler Programs will see increases to the fees they pay. The cost of NEXUS, a U.S.-Canadian program designed to ease travel between the two countries for pre-approved travelers, will go from $50 to $120. Global Entry will go from $100 to $120. SENTRI, for pre-approved travelers on the southern border with Mexico, will go down, from $122.50 to $120.

But the fees will now cover all kids under 18 regardless of which program you’re in.

What’s unchanged is that approval for the programs will still be good for five years.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Calixte said possibly by the end of summer the airport will be opening so-called E-Gates where passengers using Global Entry can use the app, bypass an officer at a booth, and instead go to a gate where their photo is taken and matched to their passport, and, assuming no red flags arise, the gates open and they pass out of the customs and passport control area and are on their way.

Further on the horizon, Blackmer said the agency is exploring a concept called smart queuing, where the app assigns passengers to certain lines depending on information they have entered into the app, such as whether they have goods to declare.

Follow the AP’s coverage of travel at https://apnews.com/hub/travel .