Obama Touting Tourism Wants Foreign Visitors Streamlined

As summer approaches, President Barack Obama is making a trip to Cooperstown, New York to see the Baseball Hall of Fame and its accompanying museum, promoting tourism in the U.S.

Obama will welcome CEOs from travel and tourism at the White House Thursday morning before heading to New York. He will also use the time to announce some executive actions that are aimed at bringing additional visitors into the U.S.

The president will direct Penny Pritzker the Secretary of Commerce and Jeh Johnson the Secretary of Homeland Security to develop then implement plans at the 15 largest airports in the nation over the upcoming four months to improve the process of entry into the states and cut the wait in lines.

The DHS will also increase its kiosks for automated passport control at airports. Six agencies will also lure tourists through working with the private-public partnership known as Brand USA to launch tourist campaigns in 10 markets overseas.

Chicago’s O’Hare and the Dallas-Ft. Worth airports through technology have cut down the average wait to only 15 minutes.

This information is according to Jeffrey Zients the director at the National Economic Council. He told reporters on Wednesday that the tourism and travel industry supported 8 million U.S. jobs across the U.S., while 1.3 million come from visits by international tourists.

The strategy, which Obama has launched, has a goal of attracting 100 million annual visitors from outside the U.S. before the end of 2021.

Zients is devoted to baseball and helped the nation’s capital have a major league team again.

That is why he and Valerie Jarrett a senior adviser at the White House believe that the location for Obama’s visit, the Hall of Fame is a great location since baseball brings communities and families together.

It will also highlight the area to international travelers given today’s international nature of baseball. It highlights as well, the importance that tourism and travel has to the economy in the U.S.

Jarrett and Zients said that everyone at the White House wanted to attend Obama’s Hall of Fame visit since it is such a popular place to visit in the summer.