Why Travel Matters
Travel & Tourism
This week, at BVK, we’re celebrating travel. The U.S. Travel Association’s National Travel and Tourism Week’s theme seems simple at face value—Travel Matters. Yet these two concise words carry a complex meaning. It matters a great deal because whether near or far, traveling has a vast impact on human health, happiness, productivity and the global economy.
Travel is woven into our agency’s DNA. In fact, the nation’s largest wholesale travel provider, The Mark Travel Corporation, was BVK’s first client and has influenced the agency’s makeup. Over thirty years and one merger later, BVK still serves this legacy client. With industry clients that include online travel agencies, tour operators, hotels, attractions and destination marketing organizations, travel represents more than 47% of our collective time and effort. Organized into a travel and tourism practice, BVK dedicates a seasoned team of travel professionals to providing thought leadership and expertise to partners around the globe.
So, this week we’re so eager to be reflecting on and celebrating why travel matters.
Travel Inspires Curiosity
In a creative industry like advertising and marketing, BVK’s product is a result of the collective experiences of our people. Traveling outside the confines of our everyday routines makes us inherently more curious, inspiring new ideas and challenges our perceptions about the world around us. BVK sees vacation time like an innovation stipend, meant to recharge our staff’s creative energy. In support of the U.S. Travel Association’s Project Time Off initiative, we encourage employees to make an active plan to use the vacation time they’ve earned because time off enriches the organization, the employee, the local community and the economy.
Travel Contributes to Economic Prosperity
In 2018, travel generated $2.5 trillion for the U.S. economy across all U.S. industries. Tax revenue from travel spending for federal, state and local governments totaled $171 billion. Without these travel-generated tax revenues, each U.S. household would pay an average of $1,340 more in taxes every year to maintain the same level of services. In the state of Wisconsin alone, tourism had a $20.6 billion impact on the state economy in 2017 and currently supports over 195,000 jobs. The Wisconsin tourism industry has grown 40% since 2012 and is continuing to trend upward.
Travel Challenges our Way of Thinking (and Working!)
We love that the travel industry constantly challenges us to think outside the box. Soon, travel companies will need to embrace innovations in artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, chat bots, voice commands and personalization while navigating changing weather patterns, policy issues, and an evolving cultural landscape. These factors have an impact on how consumers book travel. Understanding the challenges tourism marketing leaders face is important to us. As a resource to the travel community, BVK is committed to providing meaningful and thought-provoking content, research and tools that address its increasingly complex needs.
But Now We Want to Hear from You
Sure, we all love travel. But we know in this ever-changing industry, it can be hard to keep up. So, we’d love to hear from you, Travel Industry Friends. What challenges do you face? What keeps you up at night? What would you love to learn more about? As we celebrate National Travel and Tourism Week, please consider taking a moment to fill out this short, 5-minute survey. Your input will be used to inform a series of research studies and white papers that we’ll develop and share with you so that we might all continue to learn, grow and understand why Travel Matters.
Happy Travel and Tourism Week,
#BVKLovesTravel
