US Tourism Inquiry Center inspection report

US Tourism Inquiry Center inspection report

Chen Mingyuan Chen Yunyan

The United States, the world's second largest tourist country, has a higher total tourism revenue than France, ranking first. However, such a tourism powerhouse does not even have an entity's national tourism administration, which is the only exception in 199 countries around the world. In the urban tourism management, the degree of government decentralization is very high. Only the state-level government has a tourism bureau, and the national tourism work is divided into the “tourism industry functional group” belonging to the Ministry of Commerce. And in fact, the work of this functional group is more inclined to study and investigate, and there is almost no tourism marketing work. Then, what is driving the development of the national tourism industry and creating such a good result? In our survey of tourism promotion in the United States, we found that more than 1,000 tourist inquiries centers throughout the United States played an extremely important role in urban tourism promotion and passenger services.

In order to take advantage of the experience of tourism promotion in the United States, we focused on the construction of the US Tourism Enquiry Center. We found that the US Tourism Enquiry Center has the following characteristics:

1. Positioning in non-profit organizations to serve local tourism development and share responsibility for tourism promotion for the government.

In 1896, the first US Tourist Information Center was built in Detroit, southeastern Michigan, with the initial motivation to attract more business meetings. At the beginning, this kind of civil organization did not develop rapidly. By 1920, there were only 28 centers in the country.

Its high-speed growth began in the 1960s and was significantly affected by the Domestic Income Act of 1954. Article 501, paragraph 3 of the Act clearly defines “non-profit organizations” and their purpose of establishment, scope of business, and corresponding tax rates, collectively referred to as 501 Groups [1]. The vast majority of tourist inquiries are defined as 501 and 501. “The mission is to advance the economic development of tax-free areas, not to carry out general business activities for profit, and all of its profits are used for institutional operations and business development. on".

The legal orientation of the Tourist Information Center clarifies the purpose and principles of its work. This non-profit organization, which is aimed at participating in public affairs and promoting social services, is a “third sector” between the government and the enterprise. It plays a very important role in the sharing of social public affairs responsibility. We know that tourism companies aiming at profitability cannot be the mainstay of public services for urban tourism. The government has the responsibility to provide public integrated services for local tourism development. However, the government cannot undertake all the tourism public service tasks alone. Because of the government's administrative authority, staffing, and government financial expenses, it is impossible for the government to invest a large amount of administrative resources to cope with such necessary social services. The non-profit organization-oriented tourism inquiry center has the advantages of low operating cost, diverse activities and social recognition, so it can effectively communicate with various social groups and develop friendly and cooperative relations, optimize resource allocation and bring Diversification of tourism public services. It is flexible and autonomously involved in the role of certain tourism public services between the government and enterprises, and forms a good complementary relationship with the government.

Up to now, the US Tourism Enquiry Center has been developed and perfected, sharing the responsibility for tourism promotion and tourism supporting services for the government, becoming the “pusher” for the development of tourism in the United States, and the main institution for tourism image promotion throughout the United States. They are distributed in transportation hubs and important tourist attractions such as airports, stations and terminals in various cities. They have successfully acted as “collection points” for various tourism industry-related institutions in various regions in a comprehensive service model.