President Obama's decision to name two members of our board of directors to serve on the Export Council is recognition of travel's power to help strengthen our economy. As heads of United Airlines and Disney respectively, Glenn Tilton and Bob Iger are valuable voices for the enormous potential of international visitors to stimulate economic growth. The spending generated by international visitation to the U.S. is our country's largest service export and helps to sustain and create more than 10 million American jobs.

"As the President's Export Council begins its work, we strongly encourage the Administration to consider additional methods of attracting overseas travelers. A U.S. Travel analysis found that doubling arrivals from countries in the Visa Waiver Program would generate nearly $208 billion in spending for the U.S. economy and support more than 827,000 travel-related jobs. If the U.S. can double arrivals in five years from just three key emerging high-growth markets - Brazil, China and India - we would receive a total of $24 billion in export revenues that would support 206,300 travel-related jobs.