AH&LA's President Joe Mcinerney Updates - March, 19 2002
Dear Colleagues: I want to call your attention to an interesting legislative initiative, The American Travel Promotion Act [H.R. 3321]. This bill would provide $100 million to augment state government travel promotion expenditures. It allows states to use these federal grant funds for marketing and promotional programs that they find most effective in touting their unique attractions and destinations.
The American Travel Promotion Act's approach is particularly effective because:
- It allows states to use the grant funds for marketing and promotional programs that they find most effective in touting their unique attractions and destinations;
- It contains a sum certain of appropriated federal funds to be distributed to each state according to a non-subjective formula; and
- It creates no new federal bureaucracy and, therefore, would not require any additional federal employees to be hired. It simply supplements the states' existing tourism promotion budgets and efforts.
Additionally, while stimulating growth in the travel and tourism industry, The American Travel Promotion Act also would create much-needed new jobs within every congressional district and produce vital federal, state, and local tax revenues.
While visiting their Representatives during the Legislative Action Summit (LAS), AH&LA members asked them to cosponsor H.R. 3321. As a result, eight new cosponsors signed onto the bill in just one day! AH&LA continued those efforts by sending a letter to each member of the U.S. House of Representatives seeking cosponsors for The American Travel Promotion Act on March 12. AH&LA also sent out a legislative Alert requesting that AH&LA members send a letter to their Representative seeking cosponsorship of this important legislation. As a result of the efforts of LAS attendees and the letters sent by AH&LA's governmental affairs department and certain AH&LA members, the list of cosponsors has increased to 40, 28 of whom have signed on since the LAS.
If you have not already done so, please visit
In other Association news, I am pleased to report fine progress in our newly re-organized and re-positioned magazine, Lodging. In January, I announced that our award-winning flagship publication would re-target its distribution exclusively to AH&LA members. Lodging will emphasize news of the association as well as the issues and trends of most interest to our members. The magazine's staff is well on its way to accomplishing this task. A dramatic re-design is in the works, editorial content is being re-worked (see April's issue profiling award-winning hoteliers, for starters), and an advertising overhaul is underway. Advertisers are already catching on to the value of reaching only the most active, enlightened, and participatory members of the lodging population. In short, Lodging is alive and well and headed for even greater glories.
Finally, I hope to see many of you at our Annual Conference & Leadership Forum April 3-4 in Philadelphia. This year's theme, "Leadership, Unity, and Growth" is the perfect description of the conference's 12 educational seminars, which cover topics such as executive leadership, human resources, environmental issues, insurance issues, sales and marketing, and technology. In addition, you'll hear from former New York Police Department Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik, Tom Brokaw, and Horst Schulze. To register via the Internet, visit
As always, you can get all the latest Association news at