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Politics could affect America’s ability to attract international visitors

RENO — The winner of November’s presidential election could determine just how successful Las Vegas and the United States will be in attracting international visitors.

Will our policies be warm, welcoming and inviting, thus encouraging repeat visits and word-of-mouth endorsements? Or will they be closed, with administrators suspicious of those buying plane tickets to visit the American Southwest?

A panel of tourism experts fielded questions about that last week at the Nevada Governor’s Global Tourism Summit at Reno’s Grand Sierra Resort.

Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison, who chairs the Nevada Commission on Tourism, moderated the panel, which made it clear that the outcome of the Nov. 8 election could have a far greater impact on Southern Nevadans’ day-to-day lives and their jobs than they may have anticipated.

Right now, Las Vegas is sitting in a fairly good position, due in part to some unfortunate circumstances in other parts of the world.

“There are a few storm clouds out there,” said panelist Jonathan Grella, executive vice president of public affairs for the U.S. Travel Association.

He said the United States can’t afford to present the impression that it is trying to build a fortress around its borders. That said, foreign travelers are far more comfortable with a trip to Las Vegas than Europe, which has seen some horrific terrorist events in 2015 and 2016.

But U.S. destinations need to find the exact middle ground. They don’t want to appear to be too restrictive, yet they need to provide the protection visitors need.

Las Vegas is perceived as a safe location because most of its resorts have their own security teams as well as protection from the Metropolitan Police Department, said panelist Rafael Villanueva, senior director of international sales for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. Villanueva said it was an important strategic decision to locate a fire station and a police station on the Las Vegas Convention Center campus. Having police and fire presence so close provides quick response times to the entire resort corridor, he said.

Destination marketing expert Alina Xiang, general manager of East West Marketing, Beijing, concurred, saying that while Paris has been a favorite destination of many Chinese tourists, the November terrorist attack cooled their desire to go there. Being in a safe place is top of mind in tourists’ destination decisions. That seems to place a new level of importance to the Legislature’s decision at last week’s special session on beefing up police presence in the resort corridor.

“Right now, the terrorist attacks in Europe seem to outweigh the rhetoric that has occurred in our current presidential campaign,” Grella said.

But that could change, depending on who is elected and what policies are put in place.

Xiang said, for better or worse, the Chinese are viewing the presidential campaign as more of a reality television show than a discourse on the issues. They’re curious about Donald Trump’s hair and Hillary Clinton’s email troubles, but their biggest concern is over how the winner of the election will perceive the Chinese.

They’ve having a difficult time reconciling Trump’s tough talk about China with the fact that he may be the most business-savvy candidate ever to run for president — and is head of a hotel empire that should grasp the importance of serving guests well.

But they’re also fretting about Clinton’s promise to review and possibly eliminate current U.S. visa policies. U.S. officials have worked hard to obtain existing 10-year visa programs.

Xiang joked that Trump could generate some support by offering a discount to Chinese travelers — but she’s not expecting that to happen.

Asked whether current racial unrest in the United States and high-profile mass shootings in Orlando, Florida, and San Bernardino, California, have frightened prospective tourists, panelists concurred that most foreign travelers recognize how large the United States is and that the chances of a visitor getting caught in the middle of such a circumstance are slim. But they also acknowledged that the 9/11 attacks had a devastating impact on Las Vegas, primarily because the nation’s airspace was closed.

Panelist Mike Fullerton, director of public affairs for Brand USA, said it’s remarkable how damaging a seemingly random incident can be on foreigners’ decisions to travel.

Fullerton told the story of Christopher Lane, an Australian baseball player, who was shot to death in August 2013 in Duncan, Oklahoma, and how that murder resulted in a downturn in travel from Australia.

Panelists also were asked what Las Vegas and the nation could do to better prepare for the arrival of international tourists.

Grella said airport improvements are essential. He said there isn’t a single U.S. airport among the top 25 in the world and part of that is due to the attitudes of local employees toward foreigners.

Villanueva said Customs and Border Protection officers at McCarran International Airport are much more welcoming than they once were, but Xiang said the most important improvement any airport can make is to have Chinese-speaking staff available to handle problems as they occur.

She said visitors can usually find their way to ground transportation to get to their hotels and that the resorts have been doing a much better job of staffing people who speak foreign languages to engage foreign travelers.

Villanueva said the LVCVA is in the process of producing a video in Mandarin to show on Hainan Airlines’ nonstop flights between Beijing and Las Vegas that begin in December. The video will show the steps necessary to process through Customs and Border Protection and how travelers make their way into the city.

In addition, it’s developing a smartphone application that will provide information on Las Vegas attractions, dining and shopping in various Chinese dialects.

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on Twitter.

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