days were dark and we were hitting bottom, one man came to the assistance of this committee, and I think we should recognize that fact. At this time I'd like to say how grateful I am as a Member of the Senate and as the chairman of the policy study and the subcommittee for all the assistance, the advice, and counsel Mr. Walton has given us. Much of the credit for the hearings today can be placed on the doorstep of the vice chairman of the board of Holiday Inns, and so it is with special pleasure that I welcome "Wild Bill" Walton.

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM B. WALTON, VICE CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD, HOLIDAY INNS, INC.

Mr. WALTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I'd like to digress from the formal agenda today for just a moment if I might because I believe that I would be remiss and probably we all might be remiss if we didn't recognize what could very well be one of the truly great milestones in the history of our country's leadership in the area of world peace. I'm quite sure that around the world and throughout our Nation this very day that the prayers of the peoples of the world for the success of the peace conferences begun at Camp David and outlined here recently to the world, and I think it's right providential that this particular Committee on Commerce, the U.S. commerce, be considering a national policy of this country, one that we have not had in over 200 years, a policy that, among other things, does state this country's position on its attitude toward visitors to our home, that we would extend to them the warm friendship, a hand of welcome, if we do those things it would make their visit to this country a happy occasion, one that would make them want to come back, one that when they left this country they would go to their homes with a very good and warm feeling for the friendship that they had experienced in the United States.

And just a moment on a personal note, in 1972, my company on the

occasion when we extended our activities into world business and entered into some 31 countries, we instituted a program which we titled "World Understanding Through Tourism One Road to Peace." Now, this program was designed with the intent to do all those things that we could, recognizing our position as "the world's innkeeper," recognizing that innkeeping has been recognized as a warm place of hospitality through generations, that we had a unique opportunity to carry the banner of world peace and to promote world peace, and this program was designed to do exactly that.

It was designed to welcome people to our country. It was designed to carry the message of friendship around the world and abroad, and over the years we have had a great feeling of satisfaction that we have done our little bit to promote this program.

Now, the program has a peace flag and it has various and sundry subordinate programs within it designed to accomplish its intent to make a traveler's problems with medical needs, money exchange, and language easier. Everybody that flies the peace flag across these Holiday Inns, there's an identification that they subscribe to this program, and on this particular occasion I'd like to say to the chairman and to Senator Cannon, who's been with us on many occasions, that we as a company intend to rededicate ourselves to that program. We intend

to do everything we can to promote world understanding through tourism as being one major road to peace.

Mr. Chairman, I'd like to pass along to you, as we rededicate ourselves as a company to this program-we want to dedicate the program to you, and I want to pass along to you the brochure that goes with the program, the definitions and the peace flag, and say to you that we thank you for your leadership. We thank you for what you've done. We thank you for your commitment. We appreciate and thank you for your tenacity because it's become pretty obvious that tenacity is a prerequisite of getting the attention of Government on occasion.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I will address myself to the agenda, and I have filed a written statement and I will speak from that if I may and just highlight it because there are many of my associates that are anxiously awaiting the opportunity to give evidence in this hearing, and I will try to be brief and directly to the point.

Senator INOUYE. Without objection, your statement will be made part of the record.

Mr. WALTON. Thank you, sir.

My written statement says, by the way, that on this auspicious occasion, as we gather in this meeting, that I'm happy to be here. Now Mr. Chairman, I was happy to be here when I came in and I'm still substantially happy, but after listening to the Government's position, I can't honestly say that I'm still very happy to be here insofar as finding that the unbelievable situation that this country found itself in during the Arab embargo in 1973 and 1974 apparently still prevails in the administration that has had several changes or has had one or two changes at any rate even today.

In 1973 and 1974, the winter of 1973-I call it the black winter of 1973 and 1974 because that was the Arab embargo. That was the occasion for the allocation of fuel and that was the occasion for classifying the tourism industry as a nonessential industry.

Now I would be hard pressed, and I'm sure most anybody in this room would be hard pressed, to find something good that came out of the Arab embargo. One thing it did do, which is typical of America, it shocked us into an awareness. It shocked us into an awakened condition to do something about a bad situation. The bad situation mainly was the energy situation and the lack of the necessary fuels to power this great country and a second shock was an industry that later was to be learned to be the third major industry contributing to the economy and the well-being of this country to be classified as nonessential. That was unbelievable in a country as affluent as this one, probably one of the most affluent countries in the history of the world, well educated, well informed, with communications unbelievably beyond the realm of man's imagination, and yet an industry which has been, as stated here already twice, employing nearly 5 percent of the total work force of this country-a $22-billion payroll, $114 or $115 billion-and call it nonessential. And it becomes necessary for the Senate of the United States, on a resolution introduced by the chairman of today's meeting, S. Res. 281, which as I recall was introduced on February 4, 1974, and it said, we, the Senate of the United States, among other things, does recognize that travel and tourism industry, at that time the third major industry in America contributing to the retail trade of this country, and we do mandate that in the future in any allocation of scarce mate

rials that this travel and tourism industry be recognized and put in its appropriate position.

And, Mr. Chairman, your efforts and activities have been tireless since then because it's been my pleasure to work with you to help you because on the occasion of the Arab embargo, I was president of Holiday Inns. I'm one of the three founders of what has grown to be the world's largest food and lodging operation, one that grew that way in 16 years and one that we recognized could have only grown that way where free enterprise, as we know it in this country, was our way of life. On that particular occasion when the Arab embargo was set, we were classified nonessential. It shocked my board of directors into the realization that we apparently had a serious situation in Washington and the board unseated my comfortable position as president and inasmuch as I had been the spokesman for the company over the years, they said somebody has got to go to Washington. When the chairman called me in for the conference, I agreed with that, but when he said, "I think it ought to be you," I disagreed with that. I enjoyed what I was doing, but I found my way to Washington at the direction of the board of directors, responsible for my company's activities in the area of external matters that affect its business.

One of the first stops I made was on Secretary Dent. Secretary Dent admonished me for not having been to see him before and I agreed with him, and he said,

Henceforth, it is my hope that you and your peers, your associates in this industry, the other chairmen and the other vice chairmen and the other presidents, will recognize what can happen to your industry when you get too involved in carrying on the personal activities of your corporations and your business and lose sight of the public affairs and governmental affairs that go on in this country.

My next call was on you, Mr. Chairman. I found you in a state of exasperation because you had tried to get legislation after the first NTPS was made and you couldn't get anybody to agree on anything and you were, to say the least, exasperated. I happened in your office on that occasion and I'm happy to say thus began a respect and a friendship that has endured over the years that I hope will be beneficial to our country and to our industry.

Now shortly after the introduction of S. 281, the recognition of the Senate, you set about with Senate Resolution 347-which has been. referred to here to unite to study this industry in order that we may find a singular national policy, one that would unite the industry, one that would allow the industry to grow, one that would allow the industry to produce in a manner that would be beneficial to the economy and the welfare of our country, and thereafter, I'm happy to recall that we helped in acquiring and contacting the Senators who finally became cosponsors of your bill. 71 in number, which as I recall, for 71 Senators to become cosponsors is a rather significant action within itself.

Now I understand that our Senators will agree to vote for a resolution or a bill, but to become a cosponsor is a little bit unusual, but 71 of them did that, mandated this study that we now comment on at this hearing. And as we do, I can't help but reflect back on a meeting I had with our dearly beloved Senator Humphrey in 1974 at the AHMA—– American Hotel and Motel Association-convention. He made a speech and he told us all, he said, "Now we, in the Senate, are going to make

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laws. If you don't give us good input,"-and he's talking to the industry and I'm now talking to the industry—

If you don't give us good input, we are going to make these laws anyway. We may stumble and bumble through, but we will make those laws and you're going to have to live with them one way or the other. So it would certainly be to your advantage to give us good information.

I committed myself at that time that never again within my power would this industry default in expressing its views on matters which affect this industry which in turn affect the peoples of this country I think so importantly.

Now you said this meeting was called to talk about the segment of the industry and how the lack of legislation and the lack of a national tourism policy had affected us and what recommendations we might

have.

Well, I believe the effect of classifying us as nonessential, which was obviously the direct result of there being no national policy, no national understanding, no way that an administration could classify us as nonessential and have the facts as to just exactly what this industry did amount to, I think that becomes pretty apparent that the urgency for a national policy is well set out right within itself.

Now the fact that in about 3 months 90,000 people were put out of work and another 197,000 jobs were affected and about $717 million of revenue was lost, and I think unnecessarily, it's true we were beginning an energy shortage and an energy crisis and that led us into I think to a large degree the recession, possibly all of that might have been unnecessary had there been a better understanding of the energy problem and the tourism problem and possibly that may be because we of the industry have not communicated well enough.

As Secretary Dent put it to me, you should be more involved.

Now before I really begin to talk about the NTPS, I do want to say this. I want to say what we are not asking for. I think it's important to say what the industry doesn't want. We don't want the Government, for example, in Holiday Inns. We don't want the Government selling our rooms. We do a pretty good job of that. We don't want the Government building our Holiday Inns. We don't want the Government managing our Holiday Inns. We have never asked the Government to do our job and we never will. We don't want the Government in our board room. We have enough Government in our board rooms already.

We do want to comply with the laws of this land. We do want to assume our rightful responsibility in the case of a national emergency, but we don't want to be discriminated against. We want our rightful position recognized by all segments of Government, especially those segments that can affect us directly, and that, I think, is shared by most of the men of the industry with whom I've talked.

But even so, as you pointed out a few moments ago, with your resolution 281, recently it was still necessary for the Senate again to play policeman, to try to protect this industry when the energy segment of the administration worked on that tired and worn-out old idea that the way to conserve energy is to close service stations on Sundays or on weekends instead of coming up with a program to produce more energy and produce more energy from that energy activity rather than trying to curtail the activity of one of its major industries, and it was necessary again for the Senate to come to our aid and assistance to protect us.

The same thing was true in the three-martini lunch. The same thing was true in the recent action on tax reform and the same thing was true on the so-called consumer protection bill. We policed ourselves and set up new programs to stop overbooking, for example. We are capable of managing our business in this industry and I think that to ask the Senate to constantly-as I see the Senate, if it could be allowed to concentrate its efforts on making good laws instead of playing policeman to bad activities that seem to come to them, we might get along with some legislation that might be much more beneficial, in my opinion, to the country.

Now addressing myself specifically to the national tourism policy, the seven policy goals as outlined I think are very good, Mr. Chairman. I think they talk about the balance of payments very well, and I think they address themselves to the action of those things that we need to do to welcome guests to our shores, such as you mentioned a few moments ago, at Immigration and visas and things like that. They are activities that only the Government-there's nothing that Holiday Inns or any of my associates or any of us can do except complain about the mistreatment at the gates of Immigration which make it something that is more desirable certainly to achieve to welcome guests to this country.

I think that the seven points of the goals are very well taken and I think that we can accept the goals as part of the national policy.

Now during phase two we testified there again and we made certain recommendations that I will reiterate because I think they are still good: that we have better coordination of Government programs. Now I shall not belabor that because time is of the essence and everybody in this room is well aware of what the better coordination between Government agencies is.

Now, how we are going to-and I say "we" because I think the Senate and we are working together, the industry-how we're going to bring together and pull together 136 different programs operated by 46 departments and independent agencies into a cohesive package, in a politically unthreatening manner, that, Mr. Chairman, is going to be an interesting operation, to say the least, and I don't know that I have the greatest wisdom to, here in these few minutes, say to you how to do that, and I understand that's not part of what we will be doing here today anyway.

We want to recommend that full consideration be given to the enactment of a national tourism policy and an organization that will encourage employment, further employment, in this great engine of employment, as was set out by Bill Toohey and the DATO Organization during the year in a very interesting work they did to prove that actually this industry is an engine of employment because we cross all the barriers. We move into the minorities, the skilled and the unskilled. We cross into all areas. So it is truly an area of employment.

We want to recommend that there certainly be cooperation between the States. The States have carried a major burden for the tourism industry in the last several years. The States have increased their activity insofar as budgeting is concerned by some 67 percent. So the States are very definitely involved. They should be recognized.

And that committee of national tourism policy which acknowledges and sets up the intergovernmental travel and recreational planning