Letter From the President & CEO
Dear Friends and Partners,
Coming off the heels of a wonderful holiday season and now in full gear in the new year, Brand USA is hard at work with engaging campaigns to inspire travelers to visit the USA. I am especially excited about the recent launch of our newest campaign, United Stories, a mobile content creation lab traveling across the United States capturing warm and welcoming stories told from local perspectives. Throughout the campaign, a variety of accomplished content creators, storytellers, and influencers will bring international travelers on a journey through memorable narratives that reveal the warmth of the American people and show the many adventures that are just one road trip away across the USA.
For more information about the campaign and to find out where the mobile content creation vehicles are visiting, please follow United Stories on Facebook, #UnitedStories on Instagram, and VisitTheUSA.com/UnitedStories.
I was pleased to announce the launch of United Stories from South Dakota last week during my talk at the South Dakota Governor's Conference on Tourism. South Dakota was the perfect place for the United Stories mobile content lab to begin its journey, as the South Dakota town of Belle Fourche is billed as the geographic center of the United States.
It was an honor to join South Dakota’s newly sworn-in Governor Kristi Noem and South Dakota Tourism Secretary Jim Hagen at the conference where I also shared Brand USA's accomplishments over the past year and the opportunities and challenges facing the travel industry.
While the recent partial federal government shutdown is over, we continue to monitor any residual impact on international travel to the USA. We want our messaging to remain relevant, credible, and connected to the two primary aspects of our role as the nation’s destination marketing organization:
- Promoting travel to the USA.
- Communicating travel policy and correct misperceptions about those policies and processes.
In fact, we believe these mandates become even more important during times like these. That’s why we are focusing our efforts on enthusiastically promoting the USA as a place that offers more value than any other destination in the world, as well as using our channels to communicate travel policy - emphasizing the fact that the agencies that make the United States a safe and welcoming destination remain in operation. To help highlight our many campaigns, we recently hosted a webinar titled, “Fiscal Year 2019 Consumer Campaigns & Social Media Platform: Many Voices.” During this informative session, Nick Mattera, Brand USA’s senior director of consumer marketing, provided an encompassing overview of our consumer digital ecosystem strategy, as well as a look at campaigns and platforms we are leveraging this year. In case you missed it, the webinar session is available on demand here.
In addition to our consumer marketing efforts, we also are promoting the diverse stories of the United States through our broad range of cooperative marketing programs, trade shows, sales missions, road shows, training initiatives, and MegaFams, as well as other familiarization tour opportunities.
We look forward to showcasing these and other initiatives during U.S. Travel Association’s IPW, the leading inbound travel show which drives $4.7 billion in future travel to the USA. We hope you plan to join us in Anaheim, California, from June 1-5, 2019 for what, undoubtedly, will be a dynamic and informative travel event.
In addition, registration is open for our inaugural Brand USA Travel Week, a game-changing business platform for U.S. suppliers to engage with key buyers from the United Kingdom and Europe scheduled for September 9-13, 2019 at a stunning waterside venue on the Thames River in London. Brand USA Travel Week will feature an exclusive series of B2B meetings, educational opportunities, and consumer initiatives for participating partners. As an immersive celebration of the United States and an entirely new way to showcase travel experiences throughout our 50 states, five territories, and the District of Columbia, Brand USA Travel Week will complement our partners’ strategies for connecting with the travel trade.
Our goal is for Brand USA’s industry newsletter to provide examples of how we remain focused on adding and creating value for our partners and advancing our mission to fuel the nation’s economy through the power of travel. As always, we thank you for your ongoing support.
Together, we are marketing the USA!
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Christopher L. Thompson
President & CEO
Brand USA