Can Congress Ever Get It Right? Well, the US Travel Association is pulling out all of the stops with a grassroots advocacy program called, “Travel Blitz”. This program has been created to ensure Congress understands the importance of your corporate meeting planning dollars, the power of the $1.9 trillion travel industry and its 14.4 million-strong workforce across America.
The truth is that travel, and especially corporate meeting and business has a major impact on economic activity and keeping people employed in every congressional district in America. Travel Blitz has designed a program to support policies that protect and stimulate increased business travel. The group is working with Members of Congress to plan in-district meetings, conduct back-of-house industry tours of convention and meeting facilities and hotels demonstrating the investment and training that goes in to growing the workforce as well as reinforcing the impact travel events create on local economies.
Some of the policies on their hotlist to tackle include:
- Streamlining aviation security
- Making it easier for meeting planning companies to get international attendees into the US, by upgrading the entry process at our busiest airports and ports and improving customer service.
- Modernizing the US transportation infrastructure that currently causes delays, cancellations and headaches for American travelers
A major study done a couple years ago by Oxford Economics examined the link between business travel (defined as sales trips, meetings, conventions and incentive trips) and business growth. The results of this study proved that for every dollar invested in business travel, businesses benefit from an average of $12.50 in increased revenue and $3.80 in new profits. American Meetings, Inc., CEO, Andy McNeill comments, “The efforts of Travel Blitz could produce excellent news for our clients. As jobs in the travel industry are protected to maintain a qualified workforce and many travel procedures are streamlined, the process to administer and run a successful corporate meeting will increase. This, in turn, will improve the ROI for our clients Meetings, Incentives, Conventions & Exhibitions.
To learn more about this effort and its impact go to https://travelcoalition.org/.
