The next time I travel, I want to stay at a hotel run by Jonathan Tisch.

Tisch brought the Loews Hotels brand to Lake Las Vegas last year and I got the chance to interview him and hear him explain how he was going to make money in that market without a casino.

But after talking to him and reading a few chapters of his new book, "Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing the Customer Experience," I'm convinced that he has some answers to some of the questions government leaders are wrestling with on welcoming the world to America.

One of the cornerstones of Las Vegas' strategy to increase visitation in the years ahead is to capture a larger share of the international market. Nevada has an ally in that effort with former Nevada Commission on Tourism Executive Director Bruce Bommarito in a new job with the Travel Industry Association, specifically tasked with driving more traffic to the United States.

To Tisch, a key part of the equation is making overseas guests feel welcome. That's something the government hasn't done a particularly good job of and it's a plan worthy of note as we enter National Tourism Week next week.

"There are three issues that are important," said Tisch, who is chairman of the Travel Business Roundtable, a lobbying group. "We need to modernize our ports, streamline the process and articulate to the world that we want them to come."

Tisch said the tourism industry is ready to help with its expertise. The government now has to be willing to take that help.

"Look at how Disney and Universal have become experts in line management," Tisch said of the theme park companies that manage millions of guests every year. "Do you think they could offer some ideas to the people who manage the lines at airports and make the wait a better experience?

"Go to some of our airports and see what's happening. The tourism industry is offering its help and we're just asking them to take us up on it."

Tisch said part of the problem is that U.S. government leaders don't look at the benefits of tourism in the same way as other countries. Other nations spend millions of dollars to market their countries to foreigners. And it's not just about the money, Tisch said.

"We're competing with other countries that are spending hundreds of millions of dollars, but we're also competing with countries whose tourism leaders sit at the same table with the president or the prime minister," he said. "It's that important.

As relatively small as France and Spain are, they still get higher tourism numbers than the United States because the importance of the industry is held in such high esteem.

Tisch said the rest of the country can learn a lot from Las Vegas, which has a pretty solid reputation for treating its guests well.

"Las Vegas offers up a lot of examples of being able to combine safety, security and information gathering," Tisch said. "They not only know when people come in, but when they leave the country."

Safety and security are important to guests and the tourism drop-off from Asia following 9/11 taught Las Vegans how fragile the industry is.

Tisch is convinced that the United States can have secure borders while keeping its doors open. It's going to take the tourism industry taking a leadership role in convincing the government that we need both in order to thrive.

Delta emerges: When Delta Air Lines, the No. 4 traffic carrier at McCarran International Airport emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week, it was a slightly leaner version of itself in the local market than when it filed 19 months ago.

During its stay in bankruptcy, the airline jettisoned its Song Airlines subsidiary, but on the plus side, at least from a local customer's perspective, the company kept much of what Song brought to the market.

The old Song flights are ticketed as mainline Delta operations and the company is still using twin-engine Boeing 757 jets with seatback entertainment systems on the long-haul routes.

Song had one nonstop round trip a day between Las Vegas and Boston, New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Under the restructured airline, all those flights are intact. In fact, Delta now has two a day and three on three days of the week to New York, a testament to the airline's post-bankruptcy commitment to creating more overseas lift. The airline's strategy is to funnel traffic to New York for connections to and from Europe.

When Delta entered Chapter 11, it had 22 flights a day to and from Las Vegas. Today, it has an average of 18.3, according to McCarran.

The airline still has seven a day to Atlanta, its largest hub, but an average of 2.6 instead of four to secondary hub Cincinnati and 3.3 instead of six to another secondary hub, Salt Lake City, where it must compete with Southwest Airlines.

Delta is modifying its logo to symbolize its new start, going back to the so-called "widget logo" it had prior to using the wavy bands of blue and red. The new widget will be two-tone red instead of red and blue and the typeface of the Delta name will be thinner.

When planes are scheduled for maintenance, some of them will be repainted until the entire fleet is complete, a process that is expected to take a few years.

In the meantime, you can still catch a glimpse of Delta's recent past at McCarran with the lime-colored Song livery still in use.

Speaking of painting planes, US Airways is flying an Airbus A320 jet that is a tribute to Nevada, taking on the colors and design of the state flag. The management of US Airways, many former America West executives, had several planes with state tributes, including an America West Boeing 757 in Nevada colors.

Europe's open skies: While many have focused on this month's open-skies agreement talks with China, a deal signed by the United States and the European Union last week is expected to create some new routes between the two continents.

Under terms of the deal, American and European carriers would be allowed to fly between any city in Europe and the United States.

That inspired Virgin Atlantic founder Richard Branson to tell Bloomberg News that "you'll see Virgin planes taking off from all over Europe to America."

Branson has tasted some success in Las Vegas, growing service between London's Gatwick International Airport and McCarran to daily flights. The expansion has helped Great Britain supplant Japan as the leading origin of overseas tourists to the city in the last few years.

There has been some speculation that Branson would attempt to connect Virgin Atlantic flights to operations of the startup Virgin America when it begins operations. Branson holds a stake in Virgin America and some rivals tried to convince the U.S. Department of Transportation not to allow certification for the airline because it violated foreign ownership rules for domestic carriers.

Virgin America already has listed Las Vegas as one of its first planned destinations.

Would Branson consider adding lift to Las Vegas? Time will tell, but doesn't nonstop service between Las Vegas and Paris or Rome sound appealing?