Travel Industry Groups Form Lobbying Team

Staff -- Tradeshow Week, 7/25/2005

The Travel Industry Assn. of America and the Travel Business Roundtable will together lobby on behalf of what they say is a $600 billion industry.

Some members of each group's board will work with Chuck Merin, BKSH & Associates managing director, who will serve as the groups' principal lobbyist. Merin is a longtime lobbyist for TBR, an association of travel industry executives.

Spokespersons for the Washington, D.C.-based groups said they would promote the interests of the nation's third-largest industry with a unified agenda and a coordinated approach to lobbying government officials. The groups are concerned with America's image abroad and its effect on international travel to the country, along with passport, visa and immigration reforms.

"Whether you're in the tradeshow industry, amusements, hotels or airlines, your voice in Washington just got stronger," said TIA spokesman Allen Kay.

TIA President and CEO Roger Dow and National Chair Barbara Richardson will become members of TBR's board, while two members of TBR will become members of TIA's sustaining member board and executive committee.

"One industry, one voice," Dow said.

The groups' unified voice will be a force that "policymakers will find impossible to ignore," said TBR Chairman Jonathan Tisch, chairman of Loews Hotels.