IPW ’23 ends with California Dreamin’

While enjoying fine Texas hospitality on a hot, sunny evening in San Antonio, delegates of the recent IPW trade market and conference were already looking ahead to the 2024 edition of the event, with Los Angeles in the spotlight as the host.

The dates for the L.A. IPW have been set for May 3 to 7, 2024, announced during a press conference on the final day of IPW 2023, which took place at the Henry B. González Convention Center in San Antonio in mid-May. 

Los Angeles Tourism, the official non-profit destination marketing and sales organization for L.A., reported that visitation levels to the city had reached 91% of 2019 levels, with 46.2 million visitors to L.A.

“With so many exciting new reasons to visit our City of Angels, we’re thrilled to roll out the red carpet for IPW in 2024 and showcase L.A. as the ideal place to stay, play and do business,” said Adam Burke, president of the organization. “As one of the world’s most diverse and inclusive communities, we pride ourselves on being a destination where everyone is welcome,” he said, noting that a major modernization of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is helping to drive more investment in the market. 

International visitors vital

International visitation continues to be a key focus of Los Angeles Tourism, making the city an ideal venue for IPW, whose focus is the generation of foreign tourist arrivals.

For example, for two-plus decades, L.A. has been the only U.S. destination to maintain full-time tourism offices overseas, with seven offices that remained open and operational throughout the pandemic. The strategy gives Los Angeles Tourism the ability to remain agile to diversify its reach and increase market share. In 2023, the top five international source markets for the city are expected to be Mexico (1,790,000), Canada (740,000), China (460,000), Australia/NZ (390,000) and UK/Ireland (330,000).

“We are thrilled to host industry partners, buyers and media from these markets and beyond to the City of Angels next year for IPW 2024,” stated LA Tourism SVP for global tourism development, Kathryn Smits. 2024 will be the sixth time that L.A. has served as an IPW host city.

There are many things that will make L.A. attractive to attendees, including a US$15 billion modernization of LAX, the addition of 6,700 hotel rooms to the city in the past three years, and the largest number of museums and performing arts venues in the U.S., says the tourism organization.

L.A. is looking forward to hosting a lineup of major sporting events in future years, including the FIFA World Cup in 2026 and the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2028. L.A. has the most professional sports teams of any U.S. city, with 11.

Removing barriers to visit USA

Also looking ahead to the year of tourism before the next IPW was US Travel president and CEO Geoff Freeman, who said that the US Travel mission was simple – to grow travel to and within the United States, and to sustain international inbound travel as a key component of that growth.

“Demand for the United States is strong, but we need to keep growing the inbound sector. In fact, the Biden administration has set a goal of welcoming 90 million international visitors and US$279 billion in spending annually by 2027. To meet this goal, we need to be laser-focused on removing barriers to international travel.”

Those barriers include excessive visa interview wait times that affect many valuable U.S. source markets. Top visa-requiring markets face average interview wait times of more than 500 days, and U.S. Travel is leading the charge to push the government to solve this problem, said Freeman. 

While the Department of State has made some progress by introducing legislation aimed at lowering wait times, the Biden administration must understand the severity of this issue, he said. To communicate the toll of these waits, U.S. Travel launched an initiative called “They Wait, We Lose,” which includes a website (USVisaDelays.com) to collect testimonials from international travellers and U.S. businesses on how wait times are affecting them, said Freeman.

Over 5,000 registered tourism professionals took part in IPW this year, including over 1,400 international tourism product buyers from 60-plus countries. They met US tourism product reps in a tightly scripted schedule of over 90,000 timed business appointments. IPW 2023 ran from May 21 to 24, and the final night party took place on the grounds of the famous Alamo, a National Historic Landmark.