WASHINGTON -- Remember that $50 million, U.S. government sponsored,
inbound tourism campaign that was later cut to $10 million? Well,
it's been cut again.
According to a lobbyist for the American Hotel & Lodging
Association, the Commerce Department, which is in charge of running
the marketing effort, chopped it down to $6 million after the White
House instructed the department to reduce its overall budget by
$100 million.
Speaking at the AH&LA's Legislative Summit in Washington
Feb. 25, Charles Merin, managing director of BKSH & Associates,
a lobbying firm that works with the AH&LA, expressed
frustration at how the inner workings of the government resulted in
the proposed marketing effort getting battered around.
Merin placed the blame squarely on the Commerce Dept., which he
said, "screwed it up," first, by taking several months to appoint a
board to run the program -- even though, by law, the board should
have been appointed within 30 days, and then by apparently taking
too long to figure out how to procure an ad agency that would
promote the U.S. to travelers overseas.
That left the $50 million earmarked for the program unspent, which
spurred a staffer on the Senate Appropriations Committee, who Merin
said was long opposed to the program, to insert language in the
Omnibus appropriations bill passed earlier this year that cut the
budget down to $10 million. (The staffer, Merin said, has since
been fired.)
The whole episode has left four industry representatives on the
board "disgusted," Merin said. Nevertheless, 250 members of the
AH&LA went to Capitol Hill to lobby lawmakers to restore full
funding for the program.
To contact reporter Michael Milligan, send e-mail to [email protected].