Travel Promotion Act

May 18, 2009

Travel Weekly: Promoting Travel

Excerpt: “The Travel Promotion Act is back. As we reported in our news pages, it was reintroduced in the Senate during National Travel and Tourism Week...It will put $200 million a year in the hands of a public-private Corporation for Travel Promotion. The corporation will have a twofold mission: promoting the U.S. as a travel destination to foreign visitors and communicating U.S. entry and security policies to prospective visitors and to overseas media and travel marketers...Its passage would do much more than merely put the U.S. in the company of other developed countries that have national travel promotion programs. It would demonstrate that the U.S. government -- finally -- places a value on the contributions that travel and tourism make to commerce and trade, economic development, employment, education, science, the arts and diplomacy...Given the new political climate in Washington, this legislation now has excellent prospects. In fact, the chances of enacting national travel promotion legislation have never been better...If the bill's supporters can't get it passed now, they should go hide.”