What Will a New U.S. Tourism Czar Actually Do?

25.08.2023 - 14:24 / skift.com / Geoff Freeman / Dawit Habtemariam / Peter Van-Berkel

The U.S. travel industry will soon have an official voice at the highest levels of federal policymaking under the newly-created assistant secretary of travel and tourism. 

The office was created by the Omnibus Travel and Tourism Act, which was included in the massive government funding package passed by Congress on December 23.  The U.S. has historically been the only country among the G-20 to not have a cabinet-level tourism office.

It is still unclear when this person will be appointed, especially given that a budget has not been approved that would fund the job. 

The idea for the office came out of the 1995 White House Conference on Travel and Tourism, but it was shelved due to the politics of that era. It gained steam again after the pandemic reignited public awareness about the importance of international visitors, why the travel experience matters and the value of the industry, said Geoff Freeman, president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association.

Sitting inside the U.S. Department of Commerce, the assistant secretary will be responsible for coordinating across the federal agencies to leverage travel to be an economic driver, according to Freeman. “What there hasn’t been is someone whose mission it is to wake up every day and go to bed every night losing sleep over what needs to be done to drive greater efficiency,” he said.

The assistant secretary will break down agency silos and coordinate action on problems impacting travel, like the return of Chinese tourists or the recent Southwest fiasco. “These issues you are seeing with these massive airline delays will be much more of a coordination of ‘How much of this is going to be under the responsibility of Transportation?’” said Peter van Berkel, chairman of the International Inbound Travel Association and president of Travalco, a tour operator.

The Commerce Department’s U.S. Travel and Tourism Advisory Board, which is made up of two-year term members appointed by the Secretary of Commerce, will be tasked with advising the assistant secretary. On January 13, the commerce secretary revealed a list of 32 appointees who will sit on the board tasked with the new mandate. The U.S. Travel Association approved of the list.

A key part of this person’s job will be to improve U.S. competitiveness, which has been sliding, according said van Berkel. “The market share the U.S. had of international travel is almost half of what it was 25 years ago,” said van Berkel. “The rest of the world has been growing faster than the U.S., especially intra-Asian travel.”

A high-level tourism official is an important step toward promoting national tourism growth. Saudi Arabia, which established an independent tourism ministry in 2020, has made its tourism sector an investment