Although the vehicle was originally towed for having expired tags, Supervisor Mar worked with the SFPD to make sure the vehicle’s owners were aware of the city law banning advertising vehicles when it returned to the neighborhood. By threatening the portable pole dance with a $250-500 fine (which doesn’t sound that steep for a strip club, when you think about it), Mar and his posse of Richmond Station officers apparently convinced them to pack up and leave town. According to the Hustler Club’s manager, the truck has headed back to Las Vegas and will no longer be parking on the streets of San Francisco.

Mar, who emerged victorious without having to do any paperwork, explained “If I had to do legislation, I would have, but working with the police and residents has successfully resolved this issue.”

So the matter of the porny mobile billboard has been solved, but no one has yet to answer the other burning question: Is it legal to have strippers dancing in the back of a moving truck?

Television, Internet and billboard ads will begin rolling out in the U.K., Canada and Japan starting May 1, said Jim Evans, chief executive officer of Washington-based Brand USA, a public-private marketing agency established by Congress in 2010.

The desire for travel to the U.S. has waned in the past decade as people said in polls that they knew enough about America from its films, TV shows and music, Evans said. Some U.S. economic, homeland-security and immigration policies during that time also made people around world believe America was “less welcoming” to tourists, he said.

“We knew we had to change people’s opinions,” Evans said in an interview. “It’s critical we show the U.S. as a nation of freedom, diversity and a lot of fun.”

The advertising campaign, with the tagline “Discover this land like never before,” will be unveiled today at the International Pow Wow travel-industry conference in Los Angeles.

Walt Disney Co. (DIS), Marriott International (MAR) and Best Western International each contributed $1 million for the marketing campaign The federal government is matching the contributions two for one, financed by exit fees collected on visitors leaving the U.S., Brand USA said on its website.

Brand USA was created two years ago as a public-private partnership to market U.S. tourism, initially in Canada, England, and Japan and later in such countries as Brazil, China, France, Germany, India and South Korea. Its $12.5 million campaign, unveiled today at the International Pow Wow travel trade show in Los Angeles with ads launching May 1, is aimed at ” rekindling the world’s love affair with the USA – the place, the spirit and the dream,” says Brand USA CEO Jim Evans.

That romance has flagged in recent years: Though nearly 62 million international visitors contributed more than $153 billion to the U.S. economy last year and overall tourism spending increased 8.1%, the USA’s share of the total travel market had dropped from 17.2% in 2000 to an estimated 11.6% in 2010, notes U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar in a recent opinion piece for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

After Sept. 11, the U.S. Travel Association’s Geoff Freeman told the New York Times, “the perception formed around the world that America was not as welcoming as it once was, that there was difficulty in accessing the visa, and the entry process through customs was inefficient.”

“Interest is high and has largely remained high but there has been the perception that ‘America isn’t interested in me so I won’t go,’ ” Freeman told the paper. ” ‘Go away’ was the message we were sending.”

The centerpiece of the campaign will be Cash’s upbeat song and music video, which goes beyond racial diversity to showcase scenes of young women wearing headscarves on a city street and two men snuggling on a New Orleans streetcar. Locations include such well-known spots as Monument Valley and the redwoods of Northern California, along with one that seems designed to raise eyebrows, if not hackles: a water skier carving turns in front of an iceberg.

Initial advertisements will feature Cash playing the tune under New York’s Brooklyn Bridge, accompanied by musicians from around the world. As part of its marketing efforts, Brand USA will invite musical artists from around the world to perform their music in their favorite U.S. cities and towns, profiling their trips and favorite things about the USA online and through social media.

On a Monday afternoon Miami Seaquarium’s new ropes course is packed with tourists. Attendance is climbing, new attractions are opening, and Seaquarium President Andrew Hertz is hiring.

“Anytime you can give someone a job. Any chance you have to give someone an opportunity to wear the uniform with pride, it’s a wonderful thing.” Hertz said.

The surge in tourism at the Seaquarium is not isolated.

It can be seen across South Florida. Port Miami is booming, collecting four million passengers a year. That’s the most of any port anywhere in the world.

“I think it quite simply has to do with the Miami brand. People want to be in Miami,” Paula Musto with Port Miami explained.

Before cruising Monday, Sheila McNulty spent $800 over the weekend to be here.

“The kids were egging me on to stay here just because it’s a fun place.” McNulty said.

With three new cruise lines and three brand new ships arriving later this year the port is headed for a record year.

Those who work directly in the hospitality industry understand it of course, but what about those who don’t see themselves as part of our tourism fabric? Do our taxi drivers welcome our passengers at our airports with a smile and offer up information on the many things to experience in Greater Victoria? Do our convenience-store clerks on Government Street ask obvious tourists how their stay is and if there is anything they can do to make their experience better?

Sadly, the answer is mostly no. Meanwhile, our provincial politicians walk close to our embarrassing Belleville Terminal, carrying with them nothing but excuses why it can’t be rebuilt. And at the City of Victoria municipal table, we actually have motions being introduced that will make our downtown less amenable to doing business and drawing visitors and residents to the core.

Why does this matter? Many sources claim tourism is the largest industry in the world. Travel Daily News is one of those recently claiming “the economic aggregate of tourism accounted for more than 10 per cent of the world’s GDP, and its number of employed people amounted to over eight per cent of the total global employment.”

The World Travel and Tourism Council predicts in 2012 that “when the wider economic impacts of the industry are taken into account, travel and tourism is forecast to contribute some $6.5 trillion to the global economy and generate 260 million jobs – or one in 12 of all jobs on the planet.”

Going even further, the International Labour Organization claims “hotel, catering and tourism as one of the fastest-growing economic sectors worldwide which can significantly contribute to social and economic development, as well as poverty reduction in least-developed countries.”

The value of this industry is starting to come of age for some, yet there is a solid argument to be made that global tourism is still in its infancy. In the last decade, 30 of 49 least-developed countries have selected tourism as a key investment and it represents 33 per cent of their exports.

Rocket planes and spaceships to carry passengers beyond the atmosphere, similar to the suborbital hops taken by Mercury astronauts Alan Shepard and Virgil “Gus” Grissom in 1961, are being built and tested, with commercial flight services targeted to begin in 2013 or 2014.

“Based on market studies, we expect to see this type of activity result in a $1 billion industry within the next 10 years,” George Nield, associate administrator for the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation testified before the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics.

“This is a new and growing industry. If you look at the last 25 years, almost all the launches were for the same basic purposes – to launch a satellite, such as a telecommunications satellite, to orbit – and that level of business for that part of the industry is continuing today. But there are several new segments that we see just on the horizon,” Nield said.

The boom in launch business is expected to begin this year, he said in the hearing, which was carried via webcast.

NASA has hired two companies, privately owned Space Exploration Technologies and Orbital Sciences Corp.(ORB.N), to fly cargo to the International Space Station, a $100 billion research complex orbiting 240 miles (386 km) above Earth. The contracts are worth a combined $3.5 billion.

“We know that’s going to start soon, probably this year,” Nield said.

Space Exploration Technologies, which is known as SpaceX and owned and operated by entrepreneur Elon Musk, is preparing for a trial run to the station on April 30.

“We need to be careful not to assume that the success or failure of commercial spaceflight is going to hang in the balance of a single flight,” NASA space station program manager Mike Suffredini told reporters during a separate news conference.

“If they have problems along the way, it’s the kind of thing you experience in this difficult process of not only trying to launch into low-Earth orbit, but do the next-hardest thing which is to try to rendezvous safely with another spacecraft in orbit,” Suffredini said.

Brand USA, a public-private partnership that promotes inbound tourism, said it expects the trend to accelerate as the United States launches its first-ever global campaign in May to sell itself as a premier travel destination.

In an email to AFP, it also anticipated more foreign visitors “as the United States makes the process for more visitors to experience the USA more efficient and welcoming” — a reference to efforts to simplify visa procedures.

Releasing tourism industry data for 2011, the Commerce Department said spending by domestic as well as international tourists grew 8.1% from a year earlier to US$1.2 trillion, “supporting an additional 103,000 jobs for a total of 7.6 million.”

“A big factor in the increase was a surge in international visitors to our country: in 2011, 62 million international visitors came to the United States, an increase of 2.5 million from the year before,” it said.

Just over 1 million of those additional visitors came from Canada, far and away the leading source of foreign visitors to the United States. In all, 21 million Canadian residents crossed the border last year.

One powerful incentive for Canadians to visit the United States has been the strength of the Canadian dollar, which was worth more than its American counterpart for most of last year, observers say.

Another 608,000 additional visitors in 2011 came from Western European countries, for a total of nearly 12 million, and about a half-million more from South America for a record 3.76 million.

But there was only a 3% increase in visitors from Asia, to just over 7.2 million, a 2% decrease in those from Central America, and virtually no change in the number of Mexican visitors.

“Every year, tens of millions of tourists from all over the world visit America, and the more visitors we have, the more Americans we get back to work,” Commerce Secretary John Bryson said.

He said President Barack Obama’s administration “will not let up on our efforts to support the tourism industry and make America more welcoming to visitors from all over the world.”

The summit’s opening session on global source market trends featured speakers including Ricardo Amaral of Royal Caribbean’s Brazil, Mexico and Latin America operations, Sarina Bratton, managing director of Orion Expedition Cruises, and William Gibbons of the Passenger Shipping Association. New destination development is also under the spotlight at the summit, with speakers including Nigel Lingard of All Discovery Cruising and several port and destination specialists from locations as diverse as Hong Kong and Hamburg.

The growth of the China cruise industry is another item on the agenda for Monday’s summit, with various speakers from Tianjin Port and related groups addressing delegates.

The Cruise Shipping Miami conference will run from Tuesday 13 March to Thursday 15 March, attracting a wide range of speakers and delegates to debate all aspects of the business. Last year’s event attracted more than 10,000 attendees and nearly 1,000 worldwide exhibitors.

Under the document inked at the Houston City Hall, officials from the two cities agreed to broadcast tourism videos of the other side for a period of six months, starting March 22.

The five-minute videos will be shown on big screens at the two cities’ landmark locations, TV channels and mainstream websites, including the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston and the Xintiandi in Shanghai.

“Deep mutual understanding between US and Chinese peoples is the foundation for further cooperation and exchange of the two cities,” said Feng Guoqin, visiting chairman of the Shanghai Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.

Feng, who is leading a 15-member Shanghai delegation in Houston, described the promotion videos as “the new model for promoting city-to-city cooperation and exchanges,” adding that Shanghai will make similar arrangements with other friendly foreign cities.

The memorandum would bring the relations between Houston and Shanghai to a new level, said Houston Mayor Annise Parker.

“We believe that cultural exchanges and the promotional films of each city that will be respectively displayed in each city will help facilitate more information exchange and again change the relationship between our cities to become stronger and deeper,” she said.

“For Houstonians who have never experienced the magic of Shanghai, through their television sets in their home, they are now able to see a glimpse of city,” she said.

“For Shanghaiers who have never thought of Houston beyond one particular sport and basketball player Yao Ming, they will have the opportunity to see more of the city,” Parker said.

On Wednesday, the Shanghai delegation also signed a similar deal in Chicago.

The airline is Yas Air, based in Tehran. The officials, who m Treasury links to Iran’s I slamic R evolutionary Guard C orps, are Esmail Ghani, Sayyid Tabatabaei and Hosein Aghajani. The Nigerian shipping agent is Ali Jega.

“Today’s action again exposes Iran’s malign influence in the Middle East, Africa, and beyond,” David Cohen, a Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a release.

Under executive order 13224 signed by former President George W. Bush after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks, the government is authorized to block assets of foreign individuals and entities it believes have committed or pose high risks of committing acts of terrorism.

Treasury said Jega was involved in a weapons shipment seized in Nigeria in October 2010, which it says was coordinated by Iran and aimed at Gambia. The seizure uncovered grenades, rockets, mortars and ammunition hidden in construction materials, the Treasury said.