I admit that I'm in the minority as someone who gets vastly more excited about the Winter Olympics than the Summer Olympics.
The biggest part of this is tied to the fact that I get way too emotionally invested in the hockey tournaments, which only ramped up this year with the return of NHL players on the men's side of the equation.
I still get nightmares of Sidney Crosby's "golden goal" in Vancouver in 2010 that relegated the U.S. men to silver despite goalie Ryan Miller being the best player in that tournament by a wide margin. Part of the reason I regularly think about that moment is because my colleague at Paris-based Business Immo Luc-Étienne Rouillard Lafond, a native of Quebec, derives some sort of sick joy out of reminding me it happened.
But I feel like this year's Olympics needs to be a reminder of more than just past failures for us Americans.
In a recent column, Natalie Harms pointed out hoteliers, like Olympic athletes, should be striving for excellence in operations, but that's also not what I'm here to talk about today.
Italy is currently enjoying the shine of hosting this year's events in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, showcasing the beauty of northern Italy in the process.
This is clearly something a handful of U.S. markets will hope to emulate later this year while hosting portions of the FIFA World Cup. But at the same time, I've heard over and over from hoteliers in this country that they're still waiting for the U.S. government to send clear signals to the rest of the world that we're open to business and welcoming to travelers from beyond our borders.
The lack of international inbound travel — and the outsized flow of American travel to Europe — has been a repeated complaint since at least the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but if we're honest, our country wasn't signaling much interest in being a preferred destination even before then.
Embracing our place on the global stage needs to be part of a larger effort not just of events and spectacle but thoughtful focus on tourism. And indeed, hotel executives echoed this concern at the recent Americas Lodging Investment Summit in Los Angeles when they called for a tourism-focused cabinet position.
Separately, industry lobbyists have been pushing for significantly more investment in marketing to international travelers via Brand USA.
For a country that has been hyper-focused on trade deficits, the travel deficit is one of the most stark imbalances right now, and it's only been moving in the wrong direction for the past decade.
So let's embrace the spirit of international camaraderie and cooperation at the heart of the Olympics and put up the welcome sign again, especially as we prepare to host the Summer Olympics ourselves in a couple of years.
Let me know what you think on LinkedIn or via email — especially if you have suggestions for a theme for the year.
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