The U.S. Travel Association is campaigning this week
in New Hampshire along with the presidential hopefuls, letting politicians
and journalists know that travel is good for the economy — even
theirs.
“Politicians talk about creating jobs, but even by
traversing New Hampshire, they are helping to create jobs by their mere
movement,” said Jonathan Grella, executive vice president of public affairs for
U.S. Travel.
Economists at U.S. Travel say that the travel activity
associated with presidential politics is an economic boon to the early primary
states. In New Hampshire, for example, U.S. Travel found that every
campaign-related visitor spends approximately $350 per day on transportation,
hotel rooms, meals, rental cars and other needs, and that for the past five
presidential cycles, additional primary-related hotel occupancy in the state is
estimated to have added an extra $8.9 million in hotel revenue.
U.S. Travel said that its campaign has been so
successful in generating social media impressions that it has made ad buys in a
number of other key spots on the campaign trail including South Carolina, where
it is putting its message on hotel key cards, as well as in Cleveland and
Philadelphia for the party conventions, and in Las Vegas for the October 19
presidential debate.
"The best place to get the attention of
politicians is where they live — and right now, of course, they live in the
state with the next primary," said U.S. Travel Association CEO Roger Dow.