Bill for U.S. travel promotion group headed to Obama's desk

(CNN) -- A bill that will create a tourism promotion organization for the United States has received its final passage in the Senate.

The Travel Promotion Act calls for a nonprofit Corporation for Travel Promotion that will promote the United States as a travel destination and explain travel and security policies to international visitors.

"This is a historic victory for the U.S. economy and one in eight American workers whose jobs depend on travel," Roger Dow, president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association, said in a statement.

President Obama is expected to sign the bill, which the Senate passed 78-18 Thursday, in the next 10 days, according to the travel association.

A $10 fee charged to visitors from countries included in the Visa Waiver Program will partially fund the public-private organization. These visitors will pay the fee every two years when they register online using the Department of Homeland Security's Electronic System for Travel Authorization.

The rest of the funding will come through a matching program of up to $100 million in private sector contributions. If the corporation is able to raise the projected $200 million annually, the organization would be the largest national tourism communications program in the world, Dow said.

National tourism organizations in countries including Greece, Australia and Mexico each spent more than $100 million on tourism marketing in 2005, according to the U.N. World Tourism Organization. The United States spent about $6 million the same year -- the last year for which figures are available.

Oxford Economics, an economic consulting and forecasting company, estimates a well-executed promotional program would draw 1.6 million new international visitors annually and generate $4 billion in new visitor spending.

Some opponents of the legislation said that charging overseas visitors a fee to promote the United States will deter them from visiting.

"We don't want foreigners to have to jump through so many hoops that they just give up and don't bother coming to the U.S.," Steven Lott, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association, told CNN before final passage of the bill. The IATA represents airlines around the world.

Lott said improving entry and exit procedures would help U.S. tourism more than a promotional organization.

Dow acknowledged the legislation is not a magic bullet for the industry.

"Let's not be naive here. Travel promotion is not a panacea for our international travel issues. There's many things we have to continue to work on such as ... continuing to improve our visa process and all the entry processes."

Does social media matter? Not yet

Social media has gotten a lot of attention at trade shows and in the trade press in the past year, but how important are the likes of Facebook and MySpace when it comes to influencing whether or not a traveler stays at your hotel?

The short answer: Not much. At least not now, anyway.

According to the most recent travelhorizons survey, which is co-authored by Ypartnership and the U.S. Travel Association , only one in 10 Facebook users seeks advice about either destinations or travel service suppliers, and just one in 20 has joined a community of users who share a common travel interest.

Some key stats from the survey:

11 percent ask advice about a destination
8 percent ask advice about a travel supplier
6 percent learn about travel deals
5 percent get updates on destinations and travel suppliers
5 percent have joined a community with like travel interests
These findings intrigued me. After attending conference panels and reading articles (even from HNN) that laud social media as an indispensable means to reach guests, why are so few consumers reciprocating these efforts?

To find the answer, I conducted an incredibly unscientific survey in which I asked a few out-of-industry peers, all of whom travel at least five times a year, whether they use social media for travel-related purposes and, if not, why.

The most common response dealt with access and credibility. Instead of using social media to read up on their next travel destination, they more commonly used Google searches or visited Web sites that they knew had the information they wanted. And if not searching online, they were just as likely to call a friend—we all remember that anachronistic telephone device, don’t we?—to research or ask for advice.

With better sources of information out there, social media quickly fell to the wayside.

Or as one friend put it, “I’d rather use Facebook to find girls we graduated with from college than to look for hotel deals.”

So am I saying that the social-media revelation is a dismissible myth? No. As the technology and its uses evolve, it could very well become that “indispensable means” we so often hear about.

Peter Yesawich, Ypartnership’s chairman and CEO, explained as much in a recent blog: “How quickly (these survey results) may change is a matter of considerable speculation given the remarkable rate of penetration these sites have achieved in such a short period of time. Yet, for now, consumers continue to seek and respond to information about travel services and suppliers from more established offline and online media sources.”

And now if you’ll excuse me, I must visit the South Carolina Department of Tourism’s Web site to plan my summer vacation …