Tourism businesses in the Gulf Coast region could lose between $7.6 billion and $22.7 billion in visitor spending over the next three years, according to research commissioned by the U.S. Travel Association.
In addition to developing a roadmap of recommended actions for the government, U.S. Travel explicity endorsed an idea floated earlier this month whereby BP would set set up a $500 million emergency marketing fund that would be disbursed as grants to local destinations for information and marketing campaigns.
On the government side, U.S. Travel’s roadmap included proposals for tax breaks to local businesses, Commerce Department trade missions to bring foreign travel companies to the region and a "white list" for meetings and conventions that would encourage federal and local governments to hold meetings and conferences in recovering destinations.
During a Thursday afternoon conference call with the media, U.S. Travel CEO Roger Dow said the damage estimate was the result of "ground-breaking research" by Oxford Economics that surveyed the effect on travel of some two dozen natural and made-made disasters, including oil spills, pandemics, terrorist attacks and hurricanes.
Based on those experiences, Oxford projected that baseline visitor spending will not return to normal across the Gulf States for at least 15 months and perhaps 36 months, in which case the lost revenue would come to $22.7 billion.
Oxford said aggressive marketing campaigns could generate $7.5 billion or more in visitor spending into the region and hasten the recovery.
Dow noted during the call that the affected region includes 18 coastal congressional districts from Texas to Florida, where travel and tourism spending comes to $34 billion a year, sustaining 400,000 jobs.
