Selling a plan to sell America

As a marketer for the Marriott hotel chain, Roger Dow’s job was simple: “Put heads in beds.”

It’s largely the same at his new position, president and CEO of the Travel Industry Association (TIA).

{mosads}The mission, though, has grown a lot more complicated thanks to a host of new travel restrictions implemented after Sept. 11, 2001.

Increasingly, foreign heads prefer to rest their heads elsewhere. That has raised a lobbying challenge: how to convince Congress to make it easier to travel to the United States in a era when policymakers’ overriding concern remains security.

“Sept. 11 changed our collective reality as an industry. … Now there were a whole lot of things that affected us,” Dow says.

Before, two things affected how the travel business did: Was the economy good? Was the economy bad?

A good economy meant people were more willing to spend some money and take a trip to Disneyland and the like.

One of the new factors facing the industry was what happened “down the street” from TIA’s office at a renovated Greyhound bus station on New York Ave. NW — that is, what happened on Capitol Hill.

But the association, despite its more than half a century in existence, was a bit like an American tourist facing the London Underground for the first time: a little out of its element.

TIA’s lobbying team had followed congressional action, but did little to try to affect its course, leaving the lobbying to the airlines and hotel chains and other elements of the tourism business.

“We’re in the advocacy game now, which we had not been in a big way before,” Dow said.

In 2000, TIA spent around $220,000 on lobbying. It spent more than $317,000 in the first three months of 2008 alone.

The association has three firms on retainer: BKSH & Associates , Monument Policy Group and Sher & Blackwell , according to lobbying records.

The association has also gone on a membership drive and asked its current members to contribute more to the association, in part to pay for a new Discover America advertising campaign designed to combat the negative perception that America is unfriendly to foreigners.

Overall, TIA’s budget has increased from around $13 million to just under $20 million, Dow said.

The reason for the increased activity is to combat what Dow and TIA believe is the Fortress America mentality that grew out of the terrorist attacks six and a half years ago.

One big change was the process by which foreign travelers obtain a visa to enter the United States. Citizens in 27 countries don’t need visas to travel to the U.S. All other prospective travelers must sit down for a personal interview with an American citizen.

In Brazil, it can take 100 days to schedule an interview, which are conducted in only four cities in a country as large as the United States.

“If that process was reversed, would you ever go to Brazil?” Dow says.

TIA’s lobbying effort includes a mountain of statistics showing how tourism has declined in America over a period that actually predates Sept. 11.

Fifteen years ago, 9 percent of all the people who traveled outside of their own country came to the United States, Dow said. That has since dropped to around 6 percent.

Also, while overall international travel has increased by 35 million travelers, the number of visitors who come to the United States has dropped by 2 million.  

That translates to a loss of business, Dow said. The head of the Consumer Electronics Association , which hold a big trade show each year in Las Vegas, told Dow that the group’s annual show attracts 17,000 fewer international visitors.

“That’s 17,000 people who aren’t buying Dell computers, Bose headphones, Apple Nanos, and on and on,” Dow said.

But more than just business is at stake, according to TIA. The association stresses the concept of “public diplomacy,” the idea that foreign visitors who come here will have a much more favorable view of the place for having visited.

“It’s no secret that people around the world don’t like us as much as they used to. All of our research shows when people come here, 74 percent are more likely to feel good about America and Americans. This is public diplomacy.

“It would be like if you owned an automobile company and you knew that 74 percent of the people [who bought a car] took a test drive. What would you do? More test drives. What we are doing is limiting test drives. It makes no sense.”

TIA lobbyists are working with the administration on a series of administrative changes that would ease the process of traveling. It wants some of the visa restrictions lifted, for example.

The group has already had some success. For example, it helped convince Congress to approve $40 million in appropriations for a “model airport” program designed to find ways to make it easier for flyers to get in and out of security.

It also welcomed an effort at the Commerce Department to make it easier for Chinese visitors to come to the United States.

The big-ticket item is the Travel Promotion Act. The bill would impose a fee on a visa waiver program to raise $200 million. That money would be spent on promoting America as a vacation destination.

The bill has 41 co-sponsors in the Senate and 206 co-sponsors in the House. But it’s on legislative standby right now, waiting for another vehicle that can carry it to the floor.

For the former business executive and Vietnam combat veteran — Dow was awarded a Bronze Star — congressional action has proved frustratingly slow at times.

During his 34 years at Marriott, Dow’s experience on Capitol Hill was limited to the occasional Hill day, but his current job is not so dissimilar from his old one.

“I really was a neophyte when it came to lobbying Congress. What I learned was that it is just like what I spent my whole life [doing]. It’s sales. It’s putting together a proposition that makes sense.”