An In-Your-Face Travel Issue for Obama and McCain

August 31, 2008 | Uncategorized

At last the U.S. travel industry -– or at least the Travel Industry Association (TIA) of America -– has begun to put some muscle behind all the industry rhetoric and whining of the past few years.

This isn’t to suggest that the TIA has just begun to flex its muscles -– it embarked on its campaign to bring about national change for the industry about two years ago.

But what it has done now is to get down and dirty and force travel issues onto the national political agenda, an in-your-face issue for the presidential aspirants. Whether you’re in the industry or not, you should be shouting “hallelujah”!

Why? Simply because in an economy that’s quickly spiraling downward, travel and tourism generates $700 billion in the U.S. and employs 7.5 million people. And that doesn’t even include the trickle-down effect.

The trickle-down effect impacts a lot of us. I remember when I was directing Air France’s public relations efforts a few years back and one of our enterprising pr managers did a quick evaluation of the real benefit of  Air France on the local market just around New York’s JFK. He followed the money, so to speak… people pay taxi drivers to get to the airport, delicatessens sell food to the mechanics who watch over the planes, the airline buys jet fuel, the list goes on and on.

And the bottom line was many, many millions of dollars -– and at that was at just one airport. Multiply a figure like that by all the airlines, cruise lines, hotels, restaurants and theme parks across America and we’re talking about some serious economic impact. It’s little wonder why tourism is considered by many to be the largest industry in the world.

But Washington, we have a problem, a big problem — we’re forcing ourselves out of the international tourism market. People don’t want to come here anymore because they are treated with great disrespect, almost as criminals, like just so much garage washing up on our shores.

One of my partners, an Emmy-award winning television producer and attorney who travels often, told me last week of his experience flying into Fort Lauderdale from Panama. He described the disrespect with which TSA and immigration treated foreign travelers when they entered America through the airport. Long lines, understaffed immigration facilities, confused and tired people huddled into a big mass…I won’t go into it all as I’m certain you’ve seen it yourself. “I was embarrassed to be there, watching what these people were forced to endure,” he told me later that day.

I’ve tried to be as understanding of TSA and immigration and all the craziness at our airports as anyone. But isn’t it time we started asking why the people running TSA and immigration don’t use a bit more common sense? Isn’t it time someone told them that they’re not just the guardians of the airport and our borders -– they’re also our ambassadors to the world, the first taste of America foreign travelers have?

We have to take security seriously, of course, but don’t put people through an ordeal that demeans and exhausts them and their families. What would it take to have few people walking around talking to incoming travelers, apologizing for the long waits and explaining the reasons for the delays?

I mean, wake up TSA — it’s Public Relations 101 -– people will endure a lot as long as they’re treated with respect and are kept updated on what is happening. Stop making foreign travelers feel as though they’re being shuffled off to a gulag, and instead welcome them as our guests.

I know that if I was reading an article like this that someone else had written, it would be about at this point I would think to myself “this guy is over-reacting a bit.” Unfortunately, I’m not.

If you haven’t seen the article “Travel to America? No thanks” in The Times of London last January you may want to read it by clicking the link. If you want a quick synopsis, here’s the opening two lines of the article…” We would like to apologise for a terrible omission in last Sunday’s feature “10 Steps to a Stress-Free Summer”. We forgot to include “Don’t go to the USA”. It goes downhill from there.

The word is out -– stay away from the USA. And it’s having a severe impact on the U.S. travel industry. And, unfortunately, the impact of all this is a lot worse than many of us had supposed. And don’t blame it all on 9/11 either.

Just look at some of the statistics TIA has dug up. For the period  2000 – 2007 long-haul travel from Spain increased 73% but only 43% to the US. The French increased their long-haul travel 30% to the rest of the world but it’s now -8% to the USA. In Brazil long-haul travel is up 67% but is -13% to the US. Might we be seeing a pattern here?

This is why the political muscle flexing by TIA — to protect the industry — is so important to you, to me and to our national pocketbook.

Just think what the impact of a loss of $110 billion dollars in tax revenue -– that’s the U.S. tax revenue generated by tourism -– would mean to your pocketbook. Makes some of those financial shenanigans of the housing crisis seem pretty paltry, doesn’t it? And what about the addition of a few million more people on the unemployment lines. Not so pretty either.

Here’s some interesting Internet surfing. Go to the TIA site www.poweroftravel.org and look at the maps and read the statistics about your state. And then jump over to TIA’s candidate report card to rate the presidential candidates on four points. At the time I’m writing this they have only produced a card for Obama but say McCain will receive a card as well.

And then let’s start pressuring Washington to stop trying to kill the goose that’s laying the golden eggs. And get some smiling meeters and greeters out there at the airports to give a warm welcome to our guests.

Or, at least, thank them for enduring a screening system that has gone so awry.

Jim Ferri