Making the United States the easy choice for global meetings
By Kevin Hinton, Managing Director of Group Travel, U.S. Travel Association
At U.S. Travel, we have an ambitious goal: welcome 100 million international visitors annually by 2030.
Reaching it would mean an estimated $81 billion in additional spending and more than 400,000 American jobs. Meetings and live events have an important role to play in getting us there.
The formula isn’t complicated: make the United States easier to choose, easier to visit and worth returning to.
For the meetings sector, that means giving meeting professionals the confidence to bring international groups and attendees to the United States. Long visa wait times, unpredictable processing and increasingly complex entry requirements can influence where planners choose to hold their events in the first place.
At U.S. Travel, we’re advocating for faster, more predictable visa processing and the consular staffing and resources needed to meet demand. We also see an opportunity to build on the success of the FIFA PASS—which provided expedited visa appointments for World Cup ticket holders—and apply that approach to meetings and events bringing significant amounts of international attendees to the United States.
Just as important is protecting that progress. U.S. Travel is pushing back on potentially harmful policies, including the Visa Bond Program and proposed ESTA changes regarding social media accounts, that could add new costs and hurdles for international visitors. We’re making sure policymakers understand the real-world impact these decisions can have on meetings and events.
The stakes are significant. We cannot assume international businesses and associations will want to hold their gatherings here simply because we are the United States. Destinations around the world are investing aggressively to attract global meetings and events with the economic benefits they bring.
Government has an important role to play, but it won’t get us to 100 million visitors alone. Our industry has a role, too. From the first site-selection conversation through the attendee experience, we have to make the United States easier to choose, easy to navigate and compelling enough to come back.
And access is only one part of a much larger conversation. Meeting professionals are navigating geopolitical uncertainty, rising costs, evolving attendee expectations and growing pressure to demonstrate the value of in-person meetings to business leaders, investors and policymakers.
Those are some of the issues I’m looking forward to digging into during the State of the Industry conversation on Wednesday, October 14 at IMEX America. We’ll talk about the pressures facing planners and how our industry can continue delivering meaningful experiences at a time when face-to-face connection matters more than ever.
There is significant opportunity ahead. Meetings and events can help drive progress toward 100 million international visitors while strengthening our economy and ensuring the United States remains a place where the world comes together.
