The U.S Travel Association (USTA) held its fourth annual trade mission in Mumbai yesterday focusing on attracting business, meetings and leisure traffic to United States. The association is looking at promoting major cities of USA like New York City, Orlando, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Washington DC and other icons of the country. Essentially, the association is looking at promoting the destination through travel agents and is also planning to conduct consumer promotions in the coming months. The trade mission will be held in Delhi today with 20 suppliers comprising of hotels, state tourism boards and attractions from all across the US. Some suppliers will also visit Chennai and Bengaluru to interact with the travel agents

Furthermore, USTA is also encouraging the Indian trade to attend the International Pow Wow marketplace, the single largest generator of travel to the United States, to be held in San Francisco from May 21-25, 2010. “From the Indian market, we are looking at attracting meetings buyers to come and attend Pow Wow as it acts as a one stop shop for buyers to interact with all the suppliers in pre-scheduled meetings,” said Lewis.

In 2009, US witnessed 45 per cent traffic in business travellers, a decrease of 11.8 per cent to the previous year; 32 per cent VFR traffic, 3.9 per cent increase; 11 per cent leisure traffic recording an increase of 5.1 per cent and five per cent student traffic leading to 2.1 per cent growth corresponding to the previous year.