There is light at the end of the tunnel, according to Caroline Beteta, President & CEO of the California Travel & Tourism Commission (CTTC).  Emerging from the darkness of 2009 when the State of California recorded negative results in tourism arrivals and tourist spending,  the outlook for...

BATW International Consultant,  Lakshman Ratnapala writes that tourism is in an year of transformation. —————————– I recall a former Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, Solomon Bandaranaike, expounding his vision of the world in an address to...

Culinary culture has been a major aspect of the tourism promotions of the West for decades, from Paris and Rome to New York and San Francisco.  That culture is now being promoted vigorously in Asia from Beijing and Hong Kong to Manila and Bangkok.  Other destinations such as Taipei, Singapore and Mumbai...

San Francisco and the Bay Area received a dose of both good news and bad news last month (March, 2010). The good news is that President Obama has at last signed the Travel Promotion Act into law. With that the United Stated is equipping itself to compete in the international travel market by promoting...

Asia eclipsed North America as the world’s largest aviation market, last year. Some 647 million air travelers — more than a quarter of the 2.2 billion passengers who flew worldwide — took to the skies in Asia in 2009, compared to the 638 million air travelers in North America, hitherto...

Not all spending cuts are smart cuts.When companies reduce their travel budgets, there are negative consequences in lost revenue and profit growth and terms of giving competition a distinct advantage. A new study that for the first time measures the return on investment of business travel finds the...

The Country Brand Index (CBI) released by FutureBrand reveals that the United States is the world’s top country brand for the first time in five years since the Index was launched, rising from third spot in 2008. Yet it has not resulted in greater overseas travel to the country, and 2009 was the...

There is a lesson for all tourism destinations in the elimination of Chicago as a possible host of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) despite President Barack Obama’s high profile personal appeal in Copenhagen. The IOC rejected Chicago in the very first...

The U.S. Travel Association has successfully concluded its third annual Trade Mission to India, which brought double the number of senior executives from U.S. destinations and travel suppliers as last year to meet with Indian travel agents.

The creative juices of tourism marketers are overflowing as they work overtime to find unusual ways to attract travelers to destinations which until recently had depended on traditional marketing methods to get their messages across.  The new global trends in cost-effective tourism marketing focus on...