Travel industry: Add more COVID-19 tests

Execs’ letter to Trump, congressional leaders

A group of 14 travel industry leaders asked President Donald Trump and top members of Congress Monday to expand coronavirus testing as a way to revive the country’s struggling travel sector. The U.S. Travel Association letter, addressed to Trump and House and Senate leaders of both parties, requested they include expanded testing in their next round of coronavirus relief legislation.

The travel leaders, who represent hotel, casino and car rental companies, among other interests, wrote that the U.S. travel industry has lost more than half the jobs it supported in 2019, and they project that the drop in travel-related spending will cost the U.S. economy $1.2 trillion by year’s end.

“In short,” they wrote, “there can be no broader economic recovery without a recovery in travel.”

A key tool to that recovery, they wrote: efficient, effective COVID-19 testing that takes 24 to 48 hours to produce a result. “The millions of jobs lost to this pandemic across all segments of the travel spectrum can only return if demand for our products and services rebounds,” they wrote. “That demand from travelers is inextricably linked to the confidence that rapid and abundant testing will create.”

“The millions of jobs lost to this pandemic across all segments of the travel spectrum can only return if demand for our products and services rebounds. That demand from travelers is inextricably linked to the confidence that rapid and abundant testing will create.” US Travel Association, in a letter

And, the travel leaders wrote, “a strong federal role is necessary and appropriate” to enhance the nation’s testing capacity. The executives who signed the letter include the heads of Hilton, Hyatt, Loews, Marriott, Wyndham, Choice and Intercontinental Hotels, as well as Las Vegas Sands and Enterprise.

The U.S. Travel Association letter comes a week after four airlines asked the United States and the European Union to establish a joint COVID-19 testing program to rebuild confidence in “critical” transatlantic air travel. “Given the unquestioned importance of transatlantic air travel to the global economy as well as to the economic recovery of our businesses,” they wrote, “we believe it is critical to find a way to re-open air services between the U.S. and Europe.”

U.S. citizens have been barred from traveling to 26 European countries since March. The United States leads the world in coronavirus infections, with more than 4.2 million confirmed cases, and more than 147,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.