Building Back Better

In light of the growing critical needs of the travel industry, the U.S. Travel Association recently shared a document with President-elect Biden's transition team focusing on the organization's priorities for the first 100 days of President-elect Biden's administration. The document also helps outline the focus of U.S. Travel Association's advocacy work for the next several years.

The organization's recommendations for the Biden administration center around travel's power to accelerate economic recovery and reunite the country and include the following:

• Support the passage of a COVID-19 Relief Bill in 2020 that extends and expands support for small businesses, protects workers and invests in public health.

• Enact economic stimulus measures to boost travel demand by establishing a tax credit for leisure and business travel, and providing $10 billion in domestic travel promotion grants to encourage Americans to reconnect with their family, friends and fellow citizens.

• Develop science-driven, risk-based health and safety guidance that enables domestic travel, large meetings, events and conferences to resume. These standards should include the universal wearing of masks in public places and risk-based COVID-19 testing protocols that remove the need for travelers to quarantine.

• Safely reopen international travel through a science-drive, risk-based approach to testing. The COVID-19 testing protocols should alleviate the need for quarantines upon arrival, should be piloted along highly trafficked international routes, and quickly expanded in order to lift all international travel bans.

• Create a new Assistant Secretary for Travel and Tourism position at the U.S. Department of Commerce. The Assistant Secretary would be tasked with implementing policies to facilitate international travel exports and achieve the national goal of welcoming 116 million international visitors by 2028.

• Invest in the future of travel mobility and infrastructure. Call for historic federal investments in all modes of travel infrastructure, including airports, highways, passenger rail, and public transit. Target investments toward projects that improve national and regional mobility and facilitate greater travel and tourism.

Without travel, the document stresses, the U.S. is an increasingly divided and isolated nation. To see further in-depth explanations for the above recommendations, view the document in full by clicking here.

Written by Sarah Suydam, Managing Editor for Groups Today.