Brand USA's thoughts and prayers are with those impacted by hurricanes and related tropical storms across Florida, Puerto Rico, the Southeastern United States, Texas, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Currently, to support our partners in the impacted areas, we are providing direct links on Brand USA's consumer site, VisitTheUSA.com, to our state and territory partners where travelers can find the most up-to-date information during the recovery period—and are standing ready to amplify their marketing and messaging across our channels and invite international travelers to visit these destinations as they recover and open for business.

To help these areas of the United States in their recovery efforts, we are pleased to share information from Tourism Cares, the non-profit, philanthropic arm of the travel and tourism industry, on how you can help.

You can donate online and select the region(s) to support at check-out or mail a check to:

Destination Disaster Recovery Fund c/o Tourism Cares 20 Vernon Street Norwood, MA 02062 USA

The Destination Disaster Recovery Fund works in conjunction with partnerships established with the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association and the Texas Travel Industry Association, adding national support for their regional efforts.

#GiveBetterTogether is never more apt than when disaster strikes. Major natural disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and fires are occurring more frequently, often affecting tourism communities and livelihoods.

Disaster giving is an important gift and resource for destinations, and there are time-proven principles for ensuring your giving has the greatest impact.

Give today and make recovery giving the perfect complement to your relief giving.

Why give with the Tourism Cares community?

1. Dedicate part of your giving to the recovery of tourism, a cause directly aligned with your business.

2. Pool your contributions with others– we make a greater impact by working together.

3. We also make an impact by using our skills, influence, and businesses to drive recovery.

4. We share our stories and impact with your clients and partners, for brand support, inspiration, and education.

How this strategy is different– and tailored for travel companies and destinations.

While tailored to a particular event, this strategy revolves around recovery investments to improve the visitor experience and quality of life at a destination once tourism has recovered.

Recovery Tourism Investments

  • Physical restoration of valuable but vulnerable sites.
  • Promote recovery tourism through marketing and engage travel buyers, helping our operators, travel agents, and publishers to help tourists return.

Renewal Tourism Investments

  • Invest in social enterprises, so that when tourism fully recovers its benefits increasingly help those most in need; we may also support training for effective volunteerism, which often follows a disaster.
  • Capacity building for tourism NGOs, so impacted organizations that are the long term stewards of a destination come back stronger.
  • Workforce skills and talent development, boosting the capacity of professionals, especially during a time when part of the tourism workforce is displaced and rebuilding.

This program is guided by decades of disaster recovery and philanthropic expertise which have supported the SE Asia Tsunami, Hurricane's Katrina and Sandy, and the Nepal earthquake.

Thank you for considering a donation to Tourism Cares' Destination Disaster Recovery Fund!