The U.S. Travel Association has come out with a full-fledged toolkit to tackle the growing menace of the AIG Effect. USTA CEO Roger Dow sent a letter urging recipients to be vocal about the value of corporate travel and the impact of less travel on local communities.

AIG Effect

The AIG Effect is the ripple effect of corporations canceling conferences and retreats for fear of being accused of frivolous and wanton spending of public and shareholders’ funds, as has happened to AIG, Wells Fargo and the latest one to be flogged in public – Northern Trust.

In the letter, Roger Dow says that “We recognize that this toxic environment has created a serious threat to our industry, our employees and the communities where we do business and, therefore, have assembled a major, multi-faceted campaign to restore common sense to the debate.”

The letter also includes links to a full toolkit with talking points, facts and statistics to help recipients formulate a response to attacks on corporate travel, and paint these attacks as unfair. The toolkit includes facts about the economic impact of business travel and the negative impact on local economies due to cancellations of industry conferences and events.

The meetings and events component of business travel is responsible for nearly 15 percent of all travel in the United States, drives $101 billion in spending, generates one million jobs and creates $16 billion in tax revenue at the federal, state and local levels. Without the one million jobs generated by meeting and event travel, the unemployment rate in the United States would jump from 7.6 percent to 8.2 percent.

From what I read in the toolkit, the major talking point is that the meetings and conferences being canceled are hurting local economies across the nation, and you should hammer home this point to your Congress Representatives and the media, who are mainly responsible for branding all of these events as ‘junkets’.

For example, consider the case of Primerica Financial Services, which canceled a convention in Atlanta where 55,000 attendees were expected. The Atlanta CVB says that Atlanta is going to lose $55 million as a result of the cancellation. Primerica is a Citigroup subsidiary. Citigroup has accepted bailout funds and it’s top executives have been accused of profilgate spending, including buying a luxurious $50 million jet.

The point here is to recognize the difference between irresponsible spending by top executives as opposed to the benefits and necessity of incentive travel, industry conferences and meetings. The media, in its enthusiasm to find the next scapegoat, is not making this distinction, and as a result, the AIG Effect is now threatening not only the travel industry, but also the life-blood of towns and cities which were supposed to host these canceled events.

And in a bid to turn the anti anti-junket momentum into a coordinated campaign, the USTA is also working on setting up a dedicated website as a resource pool to help convey the message to policymakers and the media.

Photo by thetruthabout via flickr (creative commons).