Skift Take
Brand USA is confident about securing future funding due to bipartisan support for the program. The reality, however, is that the program faces an administration not focused on welcoming visitors.
You might think with the amount of pop culture, global headlines, and power and influence America exports to the rest of the world, it wouldn't need a marketing department. But Brand USA, the public-private partnership that serves as the nation's destination marketing arm, is currently fighting to prove the opposite.
Forty-seven senators from both parties signed a letter last week calling for the reauthorization of funding for the program. For every $14 spent on the U.S.'s visa waiver program known as ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization) by an international traveler, $10 goes to Brand USA’s efforts, with a maximum payout of $100 million per year, which is matched by the private sector. The program will lose that funding mechanism at the end of 2020’s fiscal year if Congress doesn’t act.
The public-private partnership enjoys relatively bipartisan support by the standards of 2019. That’s historically been the case too. It was passed overwhelmingly in both houses as part of the Travel Promotion Act of 2009 and reauthorized again in 2014.
Donald Trump first proposed eliminating its budget in May 2017, however, a move that Brand USA was not prepared for or warned about. Then, in February 2018, as part of the budget cap deal that was passed by Congress to avert another shutdown, the program’s funding source was diverted to a general revenue fund in order to offset other provisions of the deal.
The U.S. Travel Association describes the latter move as more or less an over
