Tourism, Security and Safety From Theory to Practice

Promoting Government-Related Business Travel
Hotels in Washington, DC serve diverse market segments: government business,
leisure travel, meetings and conventions, international tourism, and many special-
interest travel groups. Amid the drastic decline of all forms of travel to DC, indus-
try leaders realized that federal government travel, including meetings, was either
being curtailed or in some instances even relocated out of DC. Leaders of the hos-
pitality industry mobilized an appeal to members of Congress and the President to
promote travel broadly to Washington, DC, but particularly to ensure that govern-
ment travel to Washington, DC was encouraged and that government meetings
continued as scheduled in DC. In this regard, key government travel related issues
were identified by the local hospitality industry and a list was communicated to the
appropriate federal and congressional offices. The hospitality industry requested
the following support activities be initiated:
■
Issuing an executive order encouraging deferral agencies to continue to convene con-
ferences, meetings, trade shows, and training sessions in Washington, DC.
■
Urging the State Department to communicate with embassies to encourage inter-
national visitation to Washington, DC.
■
Urging members of Congress and their staffs to communicate positively with con-
stituents regarding travel to the nation’s capital.
■
Because of Washington’s position within the global economy, encouraging allies to
support the resumption of international travel.
■
As the administration deals with this crisis, urging federal agencies to cooperate
with DC authorities to minimize disturbance to local commerce and negative
national images. The perception that Washington, DC is “under siege” was having
highly negative results on local tourism (WCTC, 2001b).
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The local hospitality industry worked very hard to seek moral and business sup-
port from the federal government in order to promote government travel to sustain
its operations during the first few months. Not all these efforts were successful.
However, federal government travel was very robust within DC in the fourth quar-
ter of 2001 and the first quarter of 2002. Additionally, some of the inflammatory
depictions of DC in a state of war (rather like London 60 years earlier) by govern-
ment officials and staffers and foreign embassy staff were doused.
It should be noted that the DC hospitality industry did not seek a financial bailout.
Rather it sought moral and business support from the federal government to over-
come the most difficult period of time. The hospitality business community was
determined to pull itself through this crisis with its own resources and initiative.