HURRICANE KATRINA RECOVERY INFORMATION

STATEMENT BY JONATHAN M. TISCH
CHAIRMAN, TRAVEL BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE
SEPTEMBER 13, 2005

Time and again I am asked to articulate what it is about the travel and tourism industry that makes it so special. Hurricane Katrina has destroyed a part of our country that is rich in history and culture. The storm and its aftermath devastated our friends and colleagues in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Yet one need not look far to see how our industry is coming together during this time of crisis to support the affected employers and owners and, most importantly, our hundreds and thousands of employees who were displaced by Katrina. The examples of humanitarian assistance and financial contributions being offered by travel and tourism industry corporations and associations are both extraordinary and overwhelming.

We at Loews Hotels, like many of you with business interests in the affected areas, are still trying to find all our employees and will not stop until we find each and every person. But once they have all been located, the best thing we can do for them — both as employers and as an industry — is to help them get back on their feet by finding employment and, with it, a new sense of stability.

Together with our strategic partner, the Travel Industry Association of America (TIA), and in conjunction with the Travel & Tourism Council, we will be launching a free on-line job bank, www.katrinajobs.org, later this week to help the 260,000 travel and tourism industry employees who were displaced by Hurricane Katrina find new jobs. Many of you have heard of this effort before now, and so many TBR members have heeded our call to help populate the site with any and all available industry jobs. Roger Dow of TIA and I cannot thank you enough for your support of this effort and your willingness to help spread the word.

Congress recently passed two emergency supplemental aid packages – the first for $10.5 billion and the second for $51.8 billion; the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is spending more than $1 billion per day on its Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. It is critical to note, however, that these funds were early, emergency efforts that are considered in Washington to be “down-payments” on the much larger, comprehensive legislative relief package that the White House will ask for and Congress will fund. The TBR and TIA government affairs staff, working closely with our member associations’ and companies’ Washington Representatives, have been working tirelessly on putting together a targeted package that will provide our industry — employees, employers and owners — in the affected area with immediate relief and reconstruction assistance.

While Hurricane Katrina dominates the agenda right now, we have not lost sight of other, important industry issues, most notably public diplomacy. The 9/11 Public Discourse Project – the current iteration of the 9/11 Commission – was scheduled to hold a September 1 hearing on it’s public diplomacy recommendations in the 9/11 Report, although that hearing was postponed so that Karen Hughes, the new Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, could be added as a witness. Under Secretary Hughes has now been confirmed, and she was sworn in to office late last week. TBR and TIA had prepared testimony to submit for the record, which we proceeded with doing in spite of the postponement. Our testimony, which can be found at www.tbr.org/latest.htm, will provide you with insights into the role that the travel and tourism industry must play in the emerging public diplomacy debate. Additionally, I sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that creates the nexus amongst rising anti-Americanism around the world, dysfunctional U.S. visa policy, and the latest disaster to impact our industry, Hurricane Katrina.

Whether in response to a major crisis like Hurricane Katrina, or while working on normal industry issues like public diplomacy and visa policies, we at TBR, with our strategic partner TIA, are working hard to represent our diverse industry before the White House and Congress. We will continue to keep you up to date.

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