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UP, UP, AND AWAY: Albuquerque is known for hot-air balloons — but, as we discovered on a recent press trip, New Mexico’s largest city offers
so much more in the way of culture, cuisine, and meetings infrastructure. To see for yourself, turn to p. 20.
PLENARY
N MARCH 4, 2010, PRESIDENT OBAMA signed into law the Travel Promotion Act, which among other things created
News and notes for the meetings and conventions industry
CTP Survives One-Year Scare O
ON_THE_WEB: Learn more about the Corporation for Travel Promotion at
www.corporation fortravel
the nonprofit Corporation for Travel Promotion (CTP) — a first-ever partnership between the travel industry and the federal government to market and promote travel and tourism in the United States.
Not even a year-and-a-half later, U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) suggested cutting the program altogether. Why? It was this past July, during the height of the debt-ceiling wars, and CTP became a target of YouCut (http://majorityleader.gov/
YouCut), a program Cantor launched on his website last year that encourages the public to cast votes on programs they’d like to see eliminated from the federal budget. If enough people vote on a particular program, it’s introduced on the chopping block in the House of Representatives.
CTP is funded by contributions from the
travel industry along with a $10 entry fee charged to international visitors from certain countries. Cantor’s office estimated that dis- solving CTP — effectively “terminating remit- tances of the visitor fees to the corporation,”
continued on page 25 pcma convene October 2011 15