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This item appeared yesterday on the New York Times blog. It raises the question: does the USA need a national tourism board, and would it help the country's brand or not?
Bill to Create U.S. Tourism Board
By Lionel Beehner
The number of foreign visitors to the United States in 2009 was 9
percent below 2000. A new bill that passed the Senate last week, and is
expected to be signed into law, aims to reverse that trend.
The Travel Promotion Act would create a national tourism board to
develop ad campaigns and raise awareness of United States security and
visa procedures. The tourism board would be financed by a $10 fee on
foreign visitors who do not need a visa to enter the United States.
The travel industry has long advocated for a tourism board, arguing
that the United States is one of the few industrialized nations without
one. A January 2010 study by Oxford Economics, a forecasting and
research group in Britain, estimated that a tourism bureau would bring
in 1.6 million additional foreign visitors yearly, as well as pump
about $4 billion into the U.S. economy.
Critics of the bill, including some Republicans and some airline
industry representatives, say that the slump in foreign tourism is not
a public relations issue, but rather a result of strict immigration
rules that subject visitors to unwelcoming, and even humiliating
procedures.
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