Domestic travel spending away from home in 1998, just domestic travel, was $424 billion and because of the spin-off or indirect effect it generated an additional $563.5 billion in indirect and induced sales. The total output — this is a stunning number when you look at the national economy — for domestic and international travel in the United States in 1998 was $1.155 trillion. I think that’s a quadrillion. I can hardly even conceive of how much that is – 1.155 trillion dollars.

That represents 13.5 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States. That is a huge, huge segment of our national economy. It isn’t just a vacation. Direct expenditures on travel brought $77 billion in tax revenues alone. Sales taxes, gasoline taxes — about 75 percent of all trips are by car or bus. We talk a lot about air travel because it’s so expensive, but the biggest hitter in this is cars, people who are driving. Again, good for regional travel. That 77 billion in tax revenues is up 20 percent from just four years ago. Clearly, this is growing.

Direct employment in the travel industry was 7.6 million people and that’s an increase of almost 26 percent over the last six years. Equally growing. And total direct and indirect employment in 1998 was almost 17 million jobs. That is a very, very large percentage of total employment in the country and a lot of those are replacement jobs.

The travel industry association, and I’m not sure I quite believe all this yet, is saying that it is a myth that the jobs created in the travel sector are all low paying service jobs. That is something that’s been bandied around for a long time. They’re claiming it’s not so. They’re claiming it’s gotten better and I suspect it has as the economy’s gotten better. But, putting that aside for a moment, that’s an enormous number of jobs. Us serving ourselves to give people a good experience.

The travel industry ranks as first, second, or third employer in 28 states and the District of Columbia. First, second, or third: that’s enormous! Only the health care industry in the United States — looking at all the economic and employment sectors — only the health care industry has consistently outperformed the travel industry in producing new jobs. So, travel is a heavy-hitter.

The bottom line is that travel as an industry attracts outside capital expenditures to local economies, it supplements local tax revenues, and it creates jobs. This is good hard-core economics.

Now, how does heritage travel and cultural tourism fit into this? Well as you heard earlier, this is the faster growing segment of the travel industry.

That’s what motivated Alabama to do this study. They said two things to us. We have all these sites and we can’t continue to go back to the legislature each year and ask for a subsidy. We’ve got to find a way to use the sites appropriately, not to compromise their historical integrity, but to use the sites appropriately and generate enough revenue to help operate them. We can’t just go back to the well year after year. That’s changing.

We’re also finding that’s the case with a lot of charitable and philanthropic organizations. Foundations are now saying, we’re not so sure we want to give you a blank check for annual operating costs, but we will underwrite a business plan to help you learn how to be more self-sustaining. Now, this is a groundswell and a shift in the earth under the philanthropic community, but it is a changing attitude that is going on across the country both in the government sector — really in the whole non-profit sector. Let’s become smarter about being self-sustaining. That doesn’t mean charity is going to go away, but we’re getting smarter about the way we invest our money.

Alabama said, we’ve got to do that, and we think Alabama’s gotten a bad rap. Everybody thinks we’re stupid and prejudiced. And, I have to tell you, that was not the case when we got down there. Extraordinary people. I would never — this is off the record — I would never have planned a trip to Alabama. (laughter) As a vacation! And, I’m eager now to take my family there, because the story is so rich. You just have to let people know what you have.

Heritage cultural tourism is very closely linked to the values of the highest traveling segment we mentioned – seniors. And baby boomers who are aging. It appeals to our sense of educational quality. We want to do continued learning throughout our lives. It appeals to our sense of authenticity because we have a distaste for the artificial or the phony and it appeals to our taste for diversity because we’re interested in cultural exploration. History is, in fact, cultural exploration. It happens to be backward in time, but it is in fact, cultural exploration. And, this is something that baby boomers as a spending group want, and will spend time and money getting.

Typically, visitors who are participating in heritage and cultural tourism spend more money and spend more time than other visitors. So, that $1,260 goes higher for heritage sites, but the range is so broad I don’t want to even project what it might be here. I don’t think we’re there yet. Some other things need to happen.

What are some of the characteristics of successful heritage travel destinations? I’m going to compare some of these to Buffalo. They have ease of access and transportation. You have a wonderful airport here. It’s a terrific facility. As somebody who worked in airports for ten years, this is a very nice airport. You have great roadway connections for that all-important car traveler. You have an opportunity, although we need to get the Canadian dollar bounced up a little, to do international travel as well as an international city.

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