Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The United States is just as ambivalent about its own citizens' role as tourists. It is also
the only wealthy nation that does not require employers to give their workers a paid vaca-
tion. In contrast, more than two dozen wealthy nations like Canada, Japan, New Zealand
and most western European nations offer at least two weeks and as many as five. It is the
law.
In the United States a series of political decisions enmeshed in both partisan politics
and then the overwhelming response to the September 11, 2001, attacks had unforeseen
consequences that sent travel and tourism plummeting. For the last decade American
politicians have been reluctant to scale back the barriers erected to heighten security after
9/11, which in turn have had a negative impact on foreign travel to the United States.
The industry struggled along, pleading with the government for recognition, lobbying
Congress and contributing to campaign funds of politicians, just like other industries and
interests. Some individual companies or sectors have kept their influence in Congress; the
cruise industry is the prime example. But overall, the industry has had to rethink how it
will do business in the United States in the future. They've come up with both enterpris-
ing and surprising answers. Medical tourism is one of the new markets they have carved
out as the cost of medical care and medical insurance rose in the United States and sent
Americans scurrying for help. Mostly, though, the American industry shifted its attention
overseas, to countries whose governments were actively promoting tourism. China is the
main focus for hotel chains, and increasingly, for casinos. The Disney empire is a power
unto itself. And individual states and cities have risen to the challenge of promoting them-
selves without significant federal help. Throughout, the question of regulating the industry
is embroiled in the larger partisan debate in Congress.
Finally in 2012, President Barack Obama put into effect some of the new policies that
the industry had requested, helping to continue its recovery. That is the complex story of
American tourism in the twenty-first century.
• • •
Representative Connie Morella, a Republican from a suburban Maryland county in the
Washington, D.C., area, lost her seat in Congress in 2002. She had been a member for
sixteen years and was rewarded for her service by President George W. Bush, a fellow Re-
publican, with her appointment as the U.S. ambassador to the Organisation for Econom-
ic Co-operation and Development, an international organization of some of the world's
wealthiest countries, headquartered in Paris.
She arrived in 2003 with high hopes. While she expected to find herself at odds with
fellow member countries during some of the debates—that was part of the job descrip-
tion—she felt she knew her party well and could reasonably support her country's posi-
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