War on terror's unintended casualty: tourism

Losing market share
The image problem aside, the U.S. tourism industry is already losing global market share as borders in many parts of the world have become easier and cheaper to cross, and as countries from Spain to Singapore outspend the United States in tourism marketing and advertising.

“I don’t know if it’s naivete or arrogance that we feel people know the U.S. so well that we don’t need to invite them,” said Marilyn Carlson Nelson, CEO of Carlson Companies Inc., the Minnetonka, Minn.-based owner of travel agencies, hotels and restaurants.

Either way, Nelson said it is critical for the U.S. government to market its national parks and other attractions more forcefully, lest it concede more tourism business to other countries and allow “the perception that foreigners might not be welcome” to fester.

Thirty-nine state governments spent about $20 million in 2003 on international advertising and other promotions, according to a nationwide survey. This was down 11 percent from the year before, but still more than twice as much as the federal government has allocated for 2005.

Officials likened the U.S. tourism industry’s woes to the recent experience of American universities, which have seen declining applications from foreign graduate students since 2001. Education officials attribute the dropoff to the same three factors cited by travel executives: tighter U.S. immigration policies, negative attitudes toward the United States and increasing competition from other countries.

Angela Aggeler, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Consular Affairs, a division of the State Department, said the agency has added staffing and improved technology at consulates around the world in order to streamline visa-application procedures and make one message clear: “The welcome mat is out.”

She conceded that requiring face-to-face interviews, digital fingerprints and other personal data as part of the visa application process may have sent the opposite message. “But how do you address those perceptions?” she said.

More marketing?
Disney’s Rasulo said the U.S. government needs to spend more money on marketing and advertising. “If the source of that image is the nightly news, I don’t think that paints a particularly good picture of the United States as a tourist destination,” he said.

The Commerce Department spends $10 million a year to promote America by using clips from famous movies, but Rasulo said that is a minuscule sum compared with other countries. For example, Australia spends about $250 million a year marketing itself as a tourist destination, while Spain spends more than $70 million.

While international arrivals rose an estimated 12 percent in 2004, compared with 2003, and spending climbed an estimated 17 percent, officials largely attributed that to the improving global economy and the declining value of the dollar, which has made it cheaper to visit America. (Disney reported in its latest quarterly earnings that operating income at the company’s theme parks increased 11 percent, boosted by an increase in attendance from international tourists.)

The number of international travelers visiting the United States in 2004 — about 45 million — was about the same a decade earlier, though the country’s overall piece of the international tourism market has dwindled by about 5 percent over the same period, according to industry estimates.

Between 2000 and 2003, the United States’ worldwide share of travelers from Britain declined by 14 percent, from Germany 17 percent, from Japan 14 percent and from Brazil 28 percent, according to TIA data.

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