Abstract
A survey of the travel and tourism policies of 24 nations reveals some 13 categories of travel and tourism policy. While no nation's policy contains all 13 elements, the United States' policy explicitly involves only three: marketing the destination, encouraging private-sector involvement, and keeping statistics. Federal tourism agencies have had a checkered career, and the current chief marketing arm is a tiny, interim agency in the U.S. Commerce Department. In effect, U.S. policy is the sum of actions of a total of 50 federal agencies, with much of the responsibility for policy setting effectively left to state and municipal governments.
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