Celebrate National Travel & Tourism Week.

Travel Matters is the theme for this national Observation

The new look of www.visitportarthur.tx is a big part of our National Travel & Tourism Week observation May 5-11. We’re thanking our tourism partners and inviting everyone to check out the colorful images and news of our attractions and actions in Port Arthur. Try out our birding, take a walk along Sea Rim State Park and be sure to “get the T-shirt” after your visit to Museum of the Gulf Coast.

We pass popular tourist sites such as Pleasure Island every day; we may not even think of how it supports our community. But Pleasure Island, and others sites such as Museum of the Gulf Coast and Pompeiian Villa, restaurants such as Reel Cajun, Hamilton’s and Rodair Roadhouse and historical attractions such as Veterans Memorial Park are the backbone of Port Arthur. These places define our community, provide our families with jobs and have given us—and thousands of annual visitors —a lifetime of memories. Travel matters, and it improves Port Arthur in ways that have a wide-reaching impact on Southeast Texas residents. Travel supports jobs, and it also has an impact that we do not always see: travel can strengthen families, foster hometown pride, and build bridges that connect us with one another.

Travel Matters to America at the national level and travel is critical to the U.S. economy and American jobs. As a leader in workforce development and career advancement–travel creates and supports 15.7 million jobs across the U.S.– making it the seventh-largest private sector employer. In 2018, traveler spending generated $171 billion in total tax revenue, including $78.6 billion in state and local revenue. That $78.6 billion can pay for a host of critical resources: it’s more than enough to pay all state and local police and firefighters, or the more than one million public high school teachers.