• Travel and tourism is a $1.3 trillion industry in the United States.
• Travel and tourism generates $100 billion in tax revenue for local, state, and federal governments.
• Each U.S. household would pay $924 more in taxes without the tax revenue generated by the travel and tourism industry.
• The Travel and Tourism industry is one of the country's largest employers with 7.3 million direct travel-generated jobs.
• International travelers spent $93 billion in the U.S. in 2004.
• Shopping is the most popular domestic trip activity, and is included in 30 percent of all domestic trips.
• Approximately 2.6 million hotels rooms are sold everyday in the United States. That is enough rooms to lodge every person living in San Francisco, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Miami, and Denver combined.
• Spending by resident and international travelers in the U.S. averages $1.7 billion a day, $74 million an hour, $1.2 million a minute, and $20,000 a second.
• The travel and tourism industry is one of America's largest service exports with $93 billion spent by international visitors in the U.S. and $89 billion spent outside the U.S. by domestic travelers creates $4 billion in balance of trade surplus for the U.S.
• Just a 1 percent increase in U.S. worldwide market share would equal an 8 million increase in visitors, a $12 billion increase in expenditures, 151,000 new jobs, a $3 billion increase in payroll, and $2 billion more in federal, state and local tax revenue.

Source: Travel Industry Association of America