THE UK travel trade has welcomed the move by the Travel Industry Association of America to open a London office to support business to the US (Travel Weekly January 31).
The non-profit-making national organisation has around 2,300 members from all parts of the US tourism sector and aims to initiate joint marketing and promotion plans to boost traffic.
Francine Sheridan, UK director Europe for the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau, said: “In the absence of a US tourist board, it is a positive move. TIA is well respected.
“It is a marketing umbrella for all US suppliers and I see it pulling together all the efforts that the industry does separately in the UK. Consumers need to recognise the US as a brand and the association can now help us achieve this by supporting us more at trade and consumer shows.”
Cosmos America general manager Graham Mumford said he would like to see TIA do more to promote specialist holidays to the US, such as coach tours. He added: “The coach product gets forgotten because of the far greater promotion of US flydrives.
“We would be interested in looking at a 50:50 programme of US specialist agent training, which involves coach holidays.
“TIA needs to call a forum with the UK industry to look at a whole range of ideas.”
Virgin Holidays managing director Ron Simms agreed. “It is ridiculous that such a large destination for the UK hasn’t been represented here since the closure of the United States Travel and Tourism Administration. Just the fact that the TIA is here now helps enormously. If we run into a bureaucratic or diplomatic difficulty, it would be nice to have someone here you could go to and say ‘can you help?’.”
n TIA’s new UK address is: Travel Industry Association of America, Argentum, 2 Queen Caroline Street, London W6 9DT, tel: 020-8323 8020. Brian Whiting, manager international marketing – Europe, can be contacted on 020-8323 8115, and Cheryl Hargrove, manager international marketing – media relations, on 020-8323 8114. A third member of the UK team will join shortly as manager international marketing travel trade.