Tourism Boards Increasingly Worried About Politicians and Budget Cuts

While both sparsely and highly funded tourism boards have seen their coffers grow over the past three years, there's a general consensus that their budgets face threats from politicians, particularly in the United States. That's based on a survey from Destinations International (formerly Destination Marketing Associations International), which surveyed 433 tourism board executives in 52 countries online in April 2017 about their outlook on funding, strategy and other trends playing out in the travel industry. About 200 respondents (nearly 50 percent) were from U.S. tourism boards, the largest country represented in the survey. The survey was an update to the association's 2014 survey on the same topics. Respondents were asked to indicate their organization's funding level in one of five categories (see chart below). The less than $1 million