'Let's Go There' Campaign Aims to Encourage U.S. Leisure and Business Travel

The U.S. Travel Association urges the entire hospitality industry to join the marketing push to reignite wanderlust.

The Let's Go There campaign, initiated by the U.S. Travel Association, launches today. The aim: to inspire Americans to plan business and leisure trips, either now or in the near future. "Every entity in the travel industry is encouraged to join this national conversation to reignite America's sense of wanderlust and reinstate the feeling of anticipation," per a statement by the association.

The campaign is the result of an industrywide collaboration of more than 75 businesses and organizations that spent months discussing what would be the right message to send regarding travel as the nation deals with the realities of the pandemic.

"The Let's Go There campaign aims to tell travelers, 'When it's time for you, we'll be ready,'" said Roger Dow, president and CEO of U.S. Travel. "Our industry recognizes the need to pull together at this moment — as colleagues, not competitors — in a united message of welcome, preparedness and desire to serve travelers' needs."

"We don't know when the travel industry will fully recover, but we are confident that it will recover," said Jill Estorino, president and managing director at Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, and a co-chair of the coalition. "We have all been here before. This time might look different, but at the end of the day our industry is incredibly resilient, and the memories and experiences we enable cannot be replaced."

Spreading the Word

Last week, the Let's Go There Coalition rolled out a suite of materials for use by the industry, including social media graphics, sample website copy, a participation checklist and other ideas. The coalition has created two versions of these materials: "Let's Go There" for those who are ready to start promoting travel now, and "Let's Go There, Soon" for those who wish to participate but are not yet actively marketing to travelers.

The "soon" version of the campaign was created for destinations or travel businesses that are unable to market to out-of-state visitors at this time due to quarantines, local government restrictions, rising coronavirus cases or other limitations. Toolkit materials focus on providing inspiration for future travel, not necessarily taking action right now.

Among the association's other initiatives to promote travel is the Travel Confidently Tookit, offering full health and safety guidelines for travel businesses.

Source: Northstar Meetings Group