Gary Oster, with the U.S. Travel Association spoke at Visit Orlando’s National Travel & Tourism Luncheon. I’ve written about what the USTA, Brand USA, and Discover America have been up to for the past couple of years (posts here and here), and now, the USTA is focusing on promoting travel from within the country, instead of just selling the US to the world. Their idea is that if they can get the 42% of people who typically don’t use all of their vacation days on a vacation, they could get back the estimated $67 billion dollars left on the table for travel spending. They’ve calculated that if each of these people took just one more day of travel, that would be $30 billion added in travel spending.
Some of their validation points for convincing everyone to take their vacation days and travel are:
-Divorce rates are higher among couples that don’t travel.
-Men that don’t take an annual vacation increase their chance of heart problems by 30%.
-And, the biggie, if you don’t take your vacation days, you’re volunteering a pay cut to your company. So take them all!
Well, I’m sold. 🙂
Both general product and travel industry marketers and advertisers are jumping on the bandwagon to get people into the traveling mood. Others just use it as an emotional technique to motivate others to buy a product to enjoy that kind of lifestyle. Some examples:
Patti is still learning 