Travel & Tourism Industry Failing To Invest In The Hispanic Traveler.

Hispanic Meetings & Travel magazine (HM&T) presented its 2nd Annual Hispanic Executives Meeting Management Forum on July 14, 2004 at the Melrose Hotel in Washington, D.C. The Forum wias focused on recent reports by the Travel Industry Association of America (TIA) showing a significant increase in travel over the past three years by minority Americans.

According to the report, Hispanic households generate the highest travel volume — over 77 million person-trips or 8 percent of all domestic person-trips taken by U.S. households. Travel by Hispanic Americans has grown significantly, some 20 percent between 2000 and 2002 alone, a time when total U.S. domestic travel grew 2 percent.

“These growth rates show the travel and tourism industry that the Hispanic market has substantial buying power. However, every sector of this industry — hotels, theme parks, city visitor bureaus, transportation companies and convention centers — continues to ignore the power of the Hispanic community taking the dollar value associated with it for granted,” said Angela Gonzalez Rowe, Editor in Chief of HM&T magazine.

The one day event is designed to bring together Hispanic executives, meeting managers and hospitality industry professionals to raise the level of the industry’s cultural competence regarding the Hispanic market, educate the community on the business of meeting management, provide a solutions based forum for issues affecting the community within the meetings industry and encourage high level relationships between community based organizations, business owners and hospitality industry suppliers.

“The Hispanic community, both the independent traveler and group traveler must learn to use their economic worth by choosing to spend money only in those cities and at those hotels where there is some economic reciprocity,” said Gonzalez-Rowe.