National Travel and Tourism week is the first return to the event in two years as the tourism and hospitality sector move into recovery. As a result of the pandemic, the tourism industry has faced unprecedented challenges including record job loss, difficulty rehiring, and consumer anxiety over traveling once again. However, National Travel & Tourism week presents a unique opportunity to reset goals around this year’s theme: the future of travel. Celebrating a future that is more innovative, sustainable, equitable, and provides a more seamless experience for the consumer. Accelerating trends that have developed because of the pandemic include touchless pay options, new interactions with consumers, and strategies aimed at the ultimate benefactor of tourism: the community’s residents. The future of travel is driven by all stakeholders within the industry with the intention of providing a more seamless travel experience that benefits everyone.  

The US Travel Association has provided toolkits for destinations to help celebrate this important milestone. The toolkits include talking points about the reemergence of travel, social media graphics, branding, logos, and ways to engage the intended audience. The social media platform Twitter is participating in the event by encouraging its users to light up social media red to celebrate the industry event. Destination organizations participating in the event can download the graphics and repost to their own Twitter pages. Included in the toolkit are recommendations for celebrating the week by engaging with stakeholders in-person, displaying what the future of travel means to each community, and showing gratitude toward employees and colleagues. 

The social media campaign for this weeklong event focuses on key industry priorities; Innovation, facilitating recovery, turning twitter red, increasing global competitiveness, rebuilding America’s workforce, planning for a more inclusive future, and facilitating more in-person events. Rebuilding the workforce remains one of the most pressing challenges out of the pandemic will take aggressive policy actions to combat the challenge. National tourism and travel week encourages destination organizations to contact stakeholders and share stories on how travel recovery creates jobs in the community, demonstrates the benefits of pursuing a travel career, and focusing how a diversified workforce benefits the industry.