Las Vegas tourism officials urge changes to lure more visitors to U.S.

By Richard N. Velotta

Wednesday, April 4, 2012 | 4:30 p.m.

Agents with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Transportation Security Administration will be ordered to put on their happy faces as part of a bid to make the United States a friendlier place to visit.

Sen. Harry Reid and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar were in Las Vegas for a Wednesday morning tourism roundtable meeting with industry leaders to explain some of the initiatives of Brand USA and to get suggestions on how the nation could do a better job of welcoming foreign tourists to the country.

Reid was one of the key proponents of the Travel Promotion Act that led to the formation of Brand USA, a corporation formed from a public-private partnership that will market the United States abroad.

Stephen Cloobeck, chairman of Brand USA and CEO of Las Vegas-based Diamond Resorts International, also attended the roundtable and said some of the advertising messages would be unveiled April 22 during the U.S. Travel Association’s International Pow Wow in Los Angeles.

About 40 industry and political leaders were invited to the roundtable, which was closed to the public. Salazar said the meeting was private “so that we could have an open and frank dialogue.” He said participants spoke freely in criticizing customs and TSA agents welcoming foreign travelers with surly attitudes.

Reid said he planned to write Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano about stressing the importance of agents treating visitors better and thanking them for visiting.

Among the roundtable attendees were Gov. Brian Sandoval, State Sen. Steven Horsford, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority President and CEO Rossi Ralenkotter, resort executives Chuck Bowling of MGM Resorts International and Marybel Batjer of Caesars Entertainment, and Don Snyder, dean of UNLV’s William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration.

Salazar said he was preparing a report to be delivered to President Barack Obama about how the federal government could improve the arrival experience and encourage more visitors.

Salazar, Reid and Cloobeck concurred that a big part of improving the experience is to streamline the visa application process. For months, tourism leaders have noted there’s a growing market for travel to the United States with pent-up demand in several countries, including China and Brazil, but that the visa application process was clogged and in need of additional agents and better facilities.

Cloobeck said the United States lost tourism market share in the past decade from 18 percent to 11 percent and that it’s critical to increase it since every 35 new visitors to the country results in a new job. For the current fiscal year, he said, international visitation is up 8.1 percent over the previous year.

“Tourism represents 24 percent of our service exports,” Cloobeck said. “That’s more than the agriculture industry and the automobile industry.”

Funding for Brand USA’s marketing campaign is generated by a $14 fee on visa applications with the total collected matched by the tourism industry. Reid said the program would have $150 million to spend on promoting travel to the United States in its first year.

Jay Barrett, incoming chairman of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, said improving the visa application process would be a big boon to Southern Nevada since thousands of foreign travelers have Las Vegas on their itineraries.

In a question-and-answer session, Reid also gave support to the DesertXpress high-speed rail proposal linking Las Vegas with Southern California.

Reid said foreign visitors were used to traveling on trains and that the DesertXpress proposal eventually would link to the California High-Speed Rail system at Palmdale, Calif., to carry passengers between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

Reid also said he didn’t think this week’s resignation of the head of the federal government’s General Services Administration for spending too much money at a conference at the M Resort in Henderson would hurt Southern Nevada tourism, but he added that it was a wake-up call to government leaders that they had to spend responsibly.