New Orleans—At IAEE's Expo! Expo! event held here Roger Dow, president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association, gave a wide ranging press briefing just prior to his opening keynote Tuesday. Dow outlined the association's advocacy efforts to address international visa issues, the travel promotion act and how the country needs to boost its reputation as a more accommodating host country.

While most would view the travel industry's issues in a post-9/11 time-frame, Dow [pictured] points to events in just the last couple years that have profoundly accelerated the problems. "If you look at the past year and a half, since 2009 we've seen oil swing from $50 to $150 per barrel; the AIG effect; and then the economy tanked around the world."

In 2008, said Dow, U.S. travel peaked as a $770 billion industry. Since then, it's lost 10 percent of its value. "We're $70 billion smaller, but the good news is we're seeing ourselves come back. Travel is up a little over three percent in the last two quarters."

Much of the industry's woes come from perception, says Dow—perception at home and abroad. Domestically, travel has taken a back seat to other industry implosions, such as manufacturing or automobiles. "One in nine Americans has a job in [the travel] industry," says Dow. "It's two-and-a-half times bigger than the auto industry, but have you heard one person say, 'Gee, I wonder how the travel industry is doing?'"

Among the travel industry's losses is its share of the international market. Since 1994, the U.S. has lost a 37 percent share. Further, from 2000 to 2009, the U.S. is down 2 million "long-haul" travelers while the rest of the world has increased by 53 million. Here, Dow points to the difficulties of foreign nationals to obtain a visa as a direct contributor to this problem, one the trade show industry also cites as a major factor in hindering business and export sales.

Dow says one initiative in this area is to increase the number of visa waiver countries by 9. He says out those nine, if we can get Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Poland added to the visa waiver list, travel would immediately double.

Additionally, Dow says America's worldwide reputation among travelers is they're treated with rudeness and arrogance. "We need to change that," he says. "We're trying to get airports to treat people politely and securely at the same time. We're working on 20 airports to step up and make some changes."

Meanwhile, other countries have been aggressively promoting their destinations. "We've been silent," says Dow. This has helped drive the creation of the Travel Promotion Act which will inject $200 million into promotion campaigns to market the U.S. as a destination country.

Also key to Dow's strategy is a number of outreach and advocacy tactics. An MIT Council, consisting of executives from meetings, hospitality and services companies has been formed to help communicate the issues related to the meetings and trade show industry.

A 'travel coalition' has also been started. With more than 300,000 members, Dow wants to use its instant grass-roots capabilities to affect change. He anticipates 50,000 of the members will be keeping an eye on the trade show industry. "The AIG effect was shut down, not until after the industry lost $2 billion in business, but it showed the power of the industry coming together."