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Foreign Invasion .................................................................... More international tourists are landing in Northern Virginia
"DISNEYLAND" MAY STILL BE THE first word uttered by foreigners when asked what they would most like to see in the United States. But more and more, Washington, DC and surrounding areas have become foreign tourist destination points -- and Washington Dulles International Airport is a big reason.
Over the past few years Dulles has added nonstop flights to and from foreign destinations, and the number of foreign visitors has kept pace with that trend.
"We've seen some pronounced increases in foreign travelers," says Patrick McMahon, the director of the Division of Tourism for the commonwealth of Virginia. McMahon is armed with statistics from the U.S. Department of Commerce to back up his claim.
He says that over the past three years the number of foreign tourists staying in Northern Virginia has doubled, enough to represent a significant factor in the local economy. Altogether, 707,000 foreign visitors sink $270 million every year into Virginia, McMahon says.
It's not just coincidence that the big increase in foreign visitors has coincided with Dulles's expansion. Currently, travelers can take direct flights to Nassau, San Juan, Toronto, Frankfurt, London, Paris, and Tokyo. The last four destinations have helped Virginia tourism officials in their efforts to lure Japanese, British, German, and French tourists, which McMahon says are the target market of the state's tourist-enhancement programs.
"There was a 260 percent increase in Japanese tourists when we started nonstop service" to Tokyo in 1987, says Leo Schefer, the president of the Washington Airports Task Force, which has been instrumental in linking Dulles to international destinations through nonstop flights. Schefer...