2022年立法日:ASTA“最重要的一天”的两个重点
byDaniel McCarthy/
每年对旅行贸易的日期比本周在华盛顿特区举行的年度美国旅行顾问协会(ASTA)立法日更重要。
汇集了旅行顾问,供应商partners, and ASTA staff to gather and engage with lawmakers about the issues that matter to them the most, the ones impacting their businesses and their bottom lines on a daily basis. It is pure grassroots advocacy that has, time and time again proved to be most effective for shaping legislative agendas.
More than 230 travel advisors from 47 states came to D.C. for this year’s Legislative Day, just three states shy of its 50-state goal. Just a few years ago, according to Chris Seddelmeyer, the owner of Ohio’s Travel Concepts and co-chair of ASTA’s Government Affairs Committee, it would be a task to get advisors from 30 states to Legislative Day, which makes this year’s turnout that much more impressive.
她说:“这是ASTA年中最重要的事件。”“能够访问我们的立法者以了解系统的工作原理绝对令人难以置信。”
立法日可能是立法者或其员工亲自与旅行顾问会面的唯一一次,因此能够建立联系并传达信息的重要性,向制定管理旅行行业的法律的人可以’t be overstated.
与其他任何行业相比,旅行贸易和总体旅行行业受到了Covid-19的影响以及相关的剩菜影响和立法的影响。顾问和代理商所有者在大流行中遭受了不成比例的遭受的苦难,并且随着公司旅行和长途国际旅行的恢复道路,尽管需要返回,但许多人仍处于恢复道路上,许多人仍然低于2019年的水平。
Advisors and agency owners are meeting with lawmakers all this week to make them aware of that impact, and to implore them to support relevant, realistic laws that would help the industry on its path to recovery.
“The industry owes you all debt of gratitude for making all of us visible in the eyes of our elected officials,” Zane Kerby, ASTA president and CEO, said to attendees on Tuesday.
However, Kerby added, “Congressional meetings can be tricky,” so ASTA did its best to prepare its members and Legislative Day attendees ahead of time.
如何保存旅行交易
Ahead of Wednesday’s meetings, ASTA walked members through legislative training in order to maximize their time on the Hill. Time will always be of the essence during Legislative Day—some meetings will wrap up in the span of 15 minutes—so advisors needed to be prepared to communicate a concise, clear message.
Jessica Klement, who joined ASTA as vice president of advocacy late last year, along with David Peluso, a partner at KDCR, bipartisan government affairs firm, and Jason Jordan from the public affairs firm Advocacy Associates gave advisors the rundown on Tuesday.
乔丹说:“我们如何试图影响公共政策有很多不同的口味。”他补充说:“像立法日一样,通过基层倡导来放大选民的声音”是最有效的“风味”之一。
Lawmakers, or their staff members who were most often the people that advisors met with on Wednesday, want to know who advisors are, what the issues are, and what can be done to help them out, messages that are most effective without politics or big reports attached.
ASTA staff told advisors to tell the person they’re meeting where they’re from and what they do including any personal connections they may have to the lawmaker. Then, tell them how you became a travel advisor and what you specialize in, and tell a personal story about how COVID has affected your business. Be clear, concise, and straightforward and be prepared to roll with the punches, whether that be a time cut or a change in venue.
乔丹说,这些消息,以及关于Covid-19如何影响顾问的个人轶事,“以可能使您感到惊讶的方式进行决策,”乔丹说。
Still, even with the short-time period, the chance to meet with lawmakers or their staff also gives advisors the opportunity to develop a relationship that can serve as a door-opener down the road.
乔丹补充说:“这就是您长期建立影响力的方式。”
This Year’s Priorities
Just a few weeks ago, ASTA’s priorities at this year’s Legislative Day were different. The issue impacting business the most was the U.S.’s inbound testing requirement, which was going to be one of the two major focuses of this year’s governmental outreach.
The much-welcomed news a few weeks ago that the U.S. was dropping that mandate—“a day that will live in joy,” Eben Peck added—gave ASTA the opportunity to quickly reassess priorities for their day on the Hill.
除了对帮助实现这一目标的议员们感激之情之外,ASTA还强调了会议的两个优先事项。
Priority #1
The first was the restoration of the Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERTC), something that ASTA has been stressing ever since it was作为去年通过的两党基础设施法案的一部分,下降了.
While the ERTC is not applicable to ICs, agencies with at least one employee relied on it for relief, and planned on it being part of their bottom line, as business still struggled to come back.
佩克说:“地毯被从他们的下方拉出。”他补充说,此举“完全不公平”。
The goal was to get the ERTC retroactively restored starting in quarter four of 2021. That would need to happen as part of a legislative vehicle, either through Build Back Better reconciliation, theUSICA/China Competition Bill,或更改年终税单。
Aside from that, the pushback that this faces on the Hill is that $6 trillion has been spent on COVID relief and some lawmakers will be looking to offset the cost of ERTC restoration (approximately $8 billion). However, Peck said, “people planned for this, Congress took it away” and it’s the responsibility of elected officials to budget for these programs, not the program’s recipients.
Priority #2
今年的第二大优先事项是《美国访问法》的通过。这是一项两党法案,该法案在美国商务部内建立了旅行和旅游助理秘书。
The U.S. remains the only G20 country without a federal agency or cabinet-level official in charge of tourism policy, and while the Act wouldn’t put someone at the cabinet level, it would represent significant progress, adding a high-level official to work with partners across the world on travel issues.
According to Peck, the pandemic highlighted just how much not having someone oversee the sector affected those who work in travel.
“The pandemic highlighted the scattered nature of federal oversight of the travel trade,” he said.
除了位置,它也需要Department of Commerce to develop and implement a COVID-19 public health emergency recovery strategy in order to help the travel and tourism industry continue its recovery.
“We’ve been talking about this for two years,” he said, adding that it would help travel and tourism prepare for “the next big disruption” to the industry.
The initial March 2021 Visit America Act has since been rolled into a broader Omnibus Travel And Tourism Act that advanced out of the Senate Commerce Committee in December 2021. According to Peck, there is possible movement on this by the end of the year. Peck was also a little more optimistic about the Visit America Act garnering support because of the lack of cost compared to the ERTC restoration.