Earlier this month, I attended the Midwest Lodging Investment Summit in Chicago. One of the speakers at the conference was Joe McInerney, the President and CEO of the American Hotel and Lodging Association. McInerney gave a “View from Washington”-type speech that touched on a few legislative issues that have impacted the hotel industry during the past couple of years. One topic that he dwelled on at some length was the recently enacted Travel Promotion Act. This statute created a new quasi-governmental “Corporation for Travel Promotion,” which this October is supposed to begin an advertising campaign to encourage tourists from other countries to visit the United States. This is reportedly the first ad campaign of its kind made by the United States. I’m thinking of the familiar “Virginia is for Lovers” and “Say Yes to Michigan”-type ads that we’ve seen hit the airwaves early each spring before the summer travel season. Only this time it will be the whole country being promoted, and we probably won’t see many of the ads here. It is hoped that the program will bring 1.6 million new visitors to the United States each year. The new “corporation” and its ad campaign are being funded largely from a new $10 entry fee being assessed on visitors going through customs.
McInerney also discussed a related concern: visa reform. It’s extremely difficult for visitors from some countries to obtain a visa from the U.S. government, even for a brief visit. One such country is China. Over fifty million Chinese citizens travelled outside of their country last year, and only one million of them came here. It reportedly takes a Chinese citizen 100 days just to get appointment at a U.S. Consulate, and then another 2 months to get a visa. The same tourists can get visas to other western countries in 10 days or less. Security-conscious Israel reportedly allows the Chinese to fly there without visas and buy them at the airport.
Visa reform is a topic that also got some attention at AHLA’s Legislative Action Summit in Washington this spring. Representatives of the hotel industry voiced concerns while a State Department official listened. The official said something to the effect that the department understood these concerns and was working to address the problem. Then Marriott International’s Melissa Froehlich Flood stood, took the microphone, and assured him that the industry had heard this from the State Department before. How could we be sure that the government would act this time? Well, it’s only been a few months but there still appears to be no solution to this problem in sight.
When visiting the United States, foreign tourists reportedly spend three-to-four times as much as we Americans do when vacationing in our own country. It is hoped that with a weaker dollar, exchange rates more favorable to visitors from abroad will induce them to spend even more.
Let’s see whether these efforts succeed in attracting more visitors to the United States. We have a lot to offer to visitors from abroad, and could certainly use their business.