MANILA, Philippines - Shopaholic Filipinos on a cross-country trip of the United States are left with only two choices these days: either travel light and limit themselves to one checked-in luggage (which is almost next to impossible) or pay a $25 fee on their second piece of checked-in bag.

And should any of their suitcases or boxes exceed the 50-lb limit, even by just one seemingly inconsequential pound, they must be ready to fork up at least $50 on the spot.

As if these recently implemented rules weren?t enough, a number of US carriers are even poised to charge passengers for every single piece of checked-in luggage on domestic flights anytime soon. No exceptions.

The irony of this development wasn?t lost on a number of delegates to the recent International Pow Wow held in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Just when Roger Dow, president and CEO of America?s Travel Industry Association (TIA), trumpeted the good news that inbound tourism to the US has begun to exceed pre-9/11 figures, US airlines have resorted to every imaginable means to cushion the effect of rising fuel prices. And guess who?s bearing the brunt of such measures.

During one of several luncheons, Dow also announced the expansion of America?s visa-waiver program beyond the current 27 countries, to include South Korea and several European Union nations.

TIA even went a step further to urge the government to include Brazil, a developing country with a booming economy, to the list. No mention was made of the Philippines.

?One in eight Americans is in some way employed in the travel industry,? said Dow. ?We?ve got this darling of the US economy called travel and tourism, which is a $740-billion industry.?

Room for growth

There?s still plenty of room for growth. And this can only be achieved, said Dow, by being more proactive. At last, America, a supposed leader in marketing and technology, has acknowledged the need to compete more aggressively with its rivals in terms of on-line promotion.

For starters, TIA, in cooperation with the US Commerce Department, recently unveiled DiscoverAmerica.com, a new and improved website to promote the country to overseas travelers.

?Frankly, the old site (SeeAmerica.org) didn?t have enough funds and information behind it,? said Dow. ?This time we have nearly $4 million from the Commerce Department and that really allows us to begin to build a first-class, intuitive website that works the way the customer thinks.?

And, for that matter, speaks. Apart from English, the site has Japanese, Spanish, German and French versions. It also goes well beyond focusing on the usual places such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Miami, Orlando and Las Vegas, to include quaint and little known tourist attractions and establishments.

?Beyond these places, a whole lot is not known about what makes up the US, including the weather,? said Dow. ?The same is true about certain government policies. You need to consider all these things in planning a vacation, and this site provides you with all sorts of tools to do that.?

To make it a truly one-stop shopping experience, the site also directs users to travel experts within their markets that they can talk to.

Who knows? If resourceful Filipinos search hard enough, they could probably even chance upon reputable forwarders that could help them ship excess shopping finds more cheaply than the airlines.