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Smart Tourism Tactics in Action in Las Vegas, Official Says

Las Vegas' strategies for attracting international travelers should serve as a model for future national marketing campaigns aimed at foreign visitors, a U.S. Commerce Department official said Monday in Las Vegas.

However, both government and private sector parties must ensure that pro-tourism messages work in conjunction with federal efforts to improve border security for travelers coming in and out of the United States.

"The country can clearly take an example from the investments made by Las Vegas and your (city's) private industry," said Douglas Baker, deputy assistant secretary for service industries. "We applaud your efforts and intend to apply all of the same principles to a national campaign to demonstrate ... that an investment of this nature is well worth the taxpayers' dollars."

Addressing a National Tourism Week luncheon the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority hosted at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Baker praised Las Vegas' extensive use of marketing research to both develop new campaigns and evaluate their effectiveness.

Such efforts are important to the national economy, Baker said, because effective international marketing brings tourism expenditures back to the United States and improves this nation's image among many foreigners.

Following a brief stump speech on behalf of President Bush, Baker told the more than 400 travel industry representatives in attendance that Bush is confident global travel will continue to improve the wealth of many developing nations.

"Economic strength is a vital pillar of our ability to expand freedom, and the travel and tourism industry plays a key role in our economic momentum," said Baker, whose father, James Baker, served as secretary of state under the first President Bush. "Trade brings expectations of freedom, and tourism is strongly linked to global trade."

Last year, Baker said international travel generated approximately $81 billion in export dollars to the U.S. economy, outclassing industries such automobile manufacturing and agricultural goods. Factoring out dollars American travelers spent abroad, Baker said travel resulted in an economic gain of nearly $4 billion in 2003.

"It's not often you talk about trade and surpluses in the same sentence," Baker said.

Although international visitor totals dipped by 4 percent last year to 40.4 million, Baker said returns from the first two months of 2004 suggest the Asian and Latin American markets have rebounded. Overall, the Commerce Department has estimated international tourism will increase by 22 percent from last year through 2007.

"That will result in 49 million international tourists coming to the United States" per year by 2007, Baker said.

Foreign travelers last year totaled about 2.6 million people -- or roughly 7.5 percent -- of Las Vegas' reported 35.5 million person visitor total, said Rossi Ralenkotter, the convention authority's executive vice president. That local figure represented approximately 8 percent share of the nation's total international visitation.

Despite the overseas travel market's projected growth, Baker said the global tourism industry faces several challenges. Recent attacks in Kenya, Indonesia and the Philippines were proof that terrorists are trying to link tourism to their disruptive efforts, Baker said, adding intelligence obtained from the al-Qaida terror network showed that organization is targeting business travelers and tourists from Western nations.

"We mention this as a means to show we must stay vigilant," Baker said. "We must act together, as an industry and with our allies, in securing our borders."

Baker expressed faith in the United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology, or US-VISIT, program that would require travelers from nearly 30 nations to eventually posses biometric visas before they could enter or leave the United States. Still, he said that program still faces technological obstacles and hopes Congress will delay its current Oct. 26 deadline for certification by at least two years.

"It's critical to balance our economic security as we endeavor to expand our border security," Baker said.

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