Interview: What is the difference between US Travel and Brand USA?

(eTN) – In a continuing report of an interview eTN had the chance to conduct with Tom Garzilli, Senior Vice President of Global Marketing at Brand USA, he talks about what Brand USA does and how travel and tourism entities can partner with the organization.

Brand USA is a public-private partnership that is responsible for launching the United States’ first-ever, nationally-coordinated tourism marketing effort. In our previous interview section we discussed the value of partnerships. Here, the conversation continues to explain further what Brand USA’s specific mission is and what specific activities it has planned.

eTN: Do the activities of Brand USA include domestic activities, as well as educational activities for tourism boards to show them how they can reach out to international markets, and how to partner with Brand USA?

Tom Garzilli: Yes. Again, we are developing a lot of that as we go. We are calling these our country-ready programs in which we are helping – again many nations have been doing a lot of this work themselves – and looking at where we can best add to their value. But generally I’d say absolutely yes, we would want to be able to provide that kind of information. Whether its research, cultural information, or media information, we would want to be able to do that for partners if that’s what they are asking from us.

eTN: What is the difference between US Travel and Brand USA?

Garzilli: US Travel is a marvelous partner on the advocacy side. US Travel is really there for the purpose of education of its own members, and they are advocates for the tourism industry WITHIN the US. Our job at Brand USA is purely to market the US abroad. So, we do nothing in the US relative to consumer outreach or lobbying or advocacy or anything like that. We are purely the marketing arm and specifically for the international area.

eTN: Do you know why Brand USA is not a member of the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)? Is this going to change?

Garzilli: I do not think we have plans to join UNWTO as Brand USA. We have a very specific and very well-defined mission, which is to promote international tourism to the US.

eTN: Do you think that the US Department of Commerce should think about joining the UNWTO?

Garzilli: I would leave that decision to the federal partner, and I would not venture to give them any advice on that.

eTN: One of Hawaii’s US representatives, Tulsi Gabbard, wants to withdraw the visa waiver status for European nations, specifically including the UK, Germany, France, and I think Belgium. This was in response to a recent terror attack in Paris, because she felt granting these nations a visa waiver causes potential danger to our country’s security. I think Brand USA, or at least US Travel, fought quite a bit to actually expand the visa waiver program. In cases like this, maybe you don’t want to make a political statement, but what would this do to the US travel industry if in fact France, UK, and Germany suddenly needed to get a visa to visit the US.

Garzilli: You are right, I would not venture down that road. I would say we don’t know if that’s happening. We don’t have any reason to believe that it’s going to happen. If something like that were to happen, we would do our job as best we could under whatever circumstances there were.

eTN: I know you have a big initiative that involves our national parks. Can you tell me a little more about that?

Garzilli: Yes, I would love to tell you about that. Let’s take a step back to see how we got to that. We started looking at our mission to the point you made earlier on small partners and not just the big guys and of how we tell our story as a country. It’s of course such a diverse rich set of opportunities and experiences to talk about.

So we really started to look at a strategy about the outdoors and what do we define as our great outdoors? It’s really a combination of our natural wonders and also man-made wonders – whether it’s the outdoors of wonderful cities, or theme parks, or the outdoors of a national park, or Diamond Head I Hawaii. There is just a lot to cover there. So we created this kind of United States – a great outdoors theme.

As we start to look for great ways to tell that story, we just felt that when you look at the giant screen, like the IMAX giant screen type technology, that is such an immersive medium, and a great way to show and inspire people to want to come here. So, we started to really think about that, and in August 2016, we realized that we’ll be celebrating the centennial national park service. So from August of 2015 to August of 2016, there is going to be a lot of talk about our National Parks Service, our national parks in general, and our managed lands, and so we are making a giant screen film focused around the National Parks. All of the promotion that we’ll be doing around will be done on television shows and through digital print. Marketing events around that will be all about our outdoor adventures and our outdoor stories. Toward the end of this year in the fall, we’ll be getting the film ready for distribution, and by January 2016 it will be available globally.

eTN: That’s great. Is this something that an international tour operator, say from Germany or Hong Kong, could take advantage of? Could they be a partner in this National Park project next year, and if so, how should they plan to position themselves when they plan tours in 2016 and so forth?

Garzilli: We are working with a lot of tour operators and OTAs [online travel agencies], travel agencies, and all of our markets around the world. Again, we engage them a lot. We’re going to be talking to a lot of them at ITB, at World Travel Market, and the various other travel trade shows. Or, again, they can contact us directly. They can contact me or they can contact our local offices.

I would encourage and welcome that part of the industry engaging more closely with us, because we, as Brand USA, as the national tourist office, are three times removed from the consumer in terms of the product. We can inspire our consumer to come here, but we don’t actually sell anything. So the more we can engage with tour operators, airlines, and those that offer tour products, the better. How they can participate with us to looking at the marketing we’re going to be doing, finding some ways to engage in it, and staying in touch with us.