The U.S. Travel Association is expecting to bring industry leaders to Washington, D.C. this week to meet with lawmakers in person to discuss the policies it believes will restore travel. One of U.S. Travel’s top priorities is to “rebuild the workforce”—which appropriate, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ March Employment Report found that 431,000 jobs were added throughout the economy during the month, with 112,000 in the leisure and hospitality sector.
According to U.S. Travel Association EVP of Public Affairs and Policy Tori Emerson Barnes, “Out of the 1.6 million jobs left to recover, a staggering 1.5 million are in leisure and hospitality alone, pointing directly to the sector’s uneven recovery and how swift federal policies are needed to restore the travel workforce.” She added, “Despite this month’s employment gains, growth in the leisure and hospitality sector is far too slow to make up for more than two years of pandemic-related losses. A lack of available workers, coupled with the slow return of business and international travel spending, is restricting leisure and hospitality’s recovery, even as other sectors of the economy regain—and in some cases, exceed—pre-pandemic levels.
U.S. Travel adds that, overall, U.S. employment is just 1.4 percent below 2019 levels, but leisure and hospitality employment is down 9 percent.
Some policies that the association would like to see enacted include:
- Supporting long-term structural reforms to temporary worker programs that would provide the travel industry with dedicated, increased and predictable access to temporary seasonal work visas.
- Cosponsoring the Omnibus Travel and Tourism Act of 2021, which establishes an assistant secretary of travel and tourism at the Department of Commerce, focused on working across government to consistently develop strategies that increase travel to the U.S.
- Encouraging the Department of Homeland Security to release all authorized H-2B visas in time for the beginning of the summer season.
- Cosponsor the H-2B Returning Worker Exemption Act, which would permanently increase H-2B visas by exempting returning workers from the cap.
It’s also encouraging the administration to remove the pre-departure testing requirement for inbound travel to the U.S. and to allow the federal mask mandate for public transportation to expire on April 18.
For more in, visit www.ustravel.org.
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