International travel to the United States also shows troubling trends. While the United States had 57 million international visitors last year, up from 51 million in 2000, many are coming from Canada and Mexico, and those travelers spend $800 to $900 per trip. Long-haul, overseas travelers usually spend $3,000 to $4,000 per trip, he said.

The U.S. market share of foreign travelers continues to slip, from 9 percent in 1992 to 6 percent in 2007. That meant a loss of $135 billion for the industry during the past six years, Dow said.

The main factors are costly and lengthy processes to obtain visas to visit the United States, a perception in the foreign media that "the U.S. doesn't want you here" resulting from long delays at airports and borders, and a lack of promotion about U.S. travel policies, he said.

Improvements happening now include adding the number of countries with visa waivers and increasing the number of border-protection officers. The Travel Promotion Act, working its way through Congress, would help raise money to promote U.S. travel policies, and the Travel Industry Association's discoveramerica.com Web site is being launched this month.

The industry also needs to better convey benefits of travel beyond the economic ones, he said, adding that travelers typically are healthier, attend better schools and have better careers than folks who don't venture out. He would add "roaming" to the three Rs of reading, writing and arithmetic.

"If our children roam around the world and the world roams around to see us, then we'll thrive," Dow said. "If we don't roam around the world and we don't allow the world to roam around and see us, then the world will pass us by."

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E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com