Skift Take

This week in tourism, 20 months into Trump's presidency, travel CEOs finally got to sit down with Trump and discuss the health of the industry, and the president's role in maintaining that health. The U.S. Travel Association is now focusing on domestic growth and shutting down Project: Time Off.

Tourism News Weekly Roundup

Throughout the week we post dozens of original stories, connecting the dots across the travel industry, and every weekend we sum it all up. This weekend roundup examines tourism trends.

For all of our weekend roundups, go here.

>>The White House’s Roosevelt Room was filled with some of the U.S. travel industry’s most powerful leaders on Tuesday. We’ll be watching to see if that meeting actually produces any powerful results, and whether it helps get President Trump on the travel industry’s side: Travel CEOs Lay Out Concerns to Trump During First White House Meeting

>>The travel industry at long last gets an audience with Donald Trump. Let’s hope it results in more than just a perfunctory, handshake photo-op: Travel CEOs to Meet for First Time With Trump at White House

>>Any membership-based organization that wants to survive has to take membership feedback to heart. U.S. Travel is doing that in its move to double down on domestic travel promotion. With domestic tourism more than 60 percent of the U.S. travel industry, we wonder why this took so long: U.S. Travel Shifts Focus to Domestic Tourism Amid Prolonged International Slowdown

>>Hotel companies love to brag about providing local experiences for their guests, but few actually live up to their billing. One of Ireland’s top hotels created a job to literally help visitors find their place in the destination’s history: a genealogy butler: No DNA Required: Hotel Genealogy Butler Helps Visitors Discover Irish Roots

>>History is often written by the conquerors, as the saying goes. In tourism, stories of places are often told by companies that aren’t considering some of the most important voices from locals. Baraka is bringing some of these voices out of the shadows: Skift Global Forum Preview: Giving Locals the Power to Be Storytellers

>>It won’t be a wave, but some consumers are warming up to the idea of booking a weeklong tour package online. The Travel Corporation sees more online travel agencies on the horizon and feels that consumer demand will cause these companies to cozy up: Video: The Travel Corporation Sees Online Potential of Multi-Day Tours

>>Airbnb is going to integrate Airbnb Experiences and curated lists of meeting-appropriate homes into its booking tool. Initial feedback has been strong, so it’s probably only a matter of time until Airbnb builds partnerships in other areas: Airbnb for Work Brings Meeting Spaces and Experiences to Business Travelers

>>Airbnb’s new offerings will prove valuable for companies that don’t want to source and plan their own intricate offsite experiences. A wider push into distributing meeting space, though, isn’t here yet: Airbnb Starts Move Into Meetings

>>Now that Airbnb has integrated its own Experiences product into its business travel platform, it seems like only a matter of time until more options and add-ons are in the stable: How Homesharing Hit the Corporate Travel Mainstream

>>A single bottle with a lifespan of only three years can replace as many as 4,380 plastic bottles. It’s no joke that every individual can do their part to help reduce waste, so we’re taking action at Skift Global ForumSkift Global Forum Announces Refill Not Landfill Partnership

>>Skift Global Forum isn’t a just a line of business for us. It is the distillation of everything we work for: This Is Not a Freakin’ Trade Conference: Year Five

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Tags: tourism, Travel Trends, trends roundups

Photo credit: Orion at the White House on July 22, 2018. Travel CEOs laid out their concerns to President Trump during their first White House meeting. NASA HQ PHOTO / Flickr

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