25 APR 2012: The tourism industry is being credited with many Americans going back to work, with the hotel industry showing healthy signs of recovery.

A rise in leisure and business travel is “creating employment opportunities all across the country in the travel industry that is helping in the job recovery and benefiting the economy,” said David Huether, senior vice president of economics and research at the US Travel Association.

The first quarter of 2012 shows a 4.1 percent increase of hotel bookings over the same period last year.  That is a “very positive sign that US tourism is rebounding” said Jan Freitag, senior vice president at Smith Travel Research In.

Reports from the White House indicate that tourism jobs accounted for 5.7 percent of the workforce in March; that’s 7.6 million people in the workplace providing a tourism function.