SHARE:
Marketing
A Pitch For A New Pitch
The U.S. travel industry needs to take a new approach to the way it markets the country to foreign visitors, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Chairman Jay Rasulo told an audience at the International Pow Wow at the Orange County Convention Center.
Rasulo, chairman of the Travel Industry Association of America, is working with TIA President and CEO Roger Dow to launch "an Apollo project" designed to form a national marketing plan to increase foreign travel to the U.S. "Every added point of market share translates into 8 million new visitors, who generate 150,000 new jobs, $12 billion in revenues and $2 billion in tax revenues," Rasulo said.
In Florida, 24% of the estimated 79 million annual visitors come from overseas and generate $57 billion in taxable sales, according to Visit Florida and Smith Travel Research.More than 1,000 U.S. travel organizations and about 1,500 domestic and foreign travel buyers from 70-plus countries attended the Pow Wow in May, a marketplace where buyers and sellers negotiate contracts and generate more than $3.5 billion in travel.
