Arizona is a 140,006 square-mile theme park surrounded by six and a half billion potential tourists. We are the Grand Canyon State. We have Tombstone, the Sonoran Desert Museum, Sedona, Flagstaff, Route 66, Lake Powell, the White Mountains, Scottsdale, Kitt Peak, even Biosphere. People come from the world over to sample what’s left of the old West, immerse themselves in native-American culture and enjoy the palpable Hispanic influence on our architecture, food, music and way of life.

Arizona visitors bring nothing but cash and take nothing but pictures. It's a $10 billion industry.

The Arizona Daily Star reports recently at least 40 business conferences have decided not to come or have cancelled their Arizona meetings, resulting in a loss of $15 million to the state’s conference hotels. Further, they report the economic impact is probably quadrupled as the figure only includes room charges lost directly to the hotels. Many of these groups are willing to come to Arizona, but fear their attendees are hesitant to come due to their own political views or reasons of safety.

That’s 40 lost opportunities for my company—and thousands of others—to bid on product and service contracts with these groups.

It’s 40 fewer groups requiring waiters, bartenders, valets, bellmen, managers and maids; 40 fewer opportunities to provide meat and produce, beverages, greens fees and shopping sprees. Some economic forecasters tell us the real economic cost is actually seven times the room rate loss. They say every tourism dollar brought into a market turns over seven times in the local economy. Those dollars support local businesses not even related to tourism.

When Governor Brewer announces beheadings in Tucson and Congressman Grijalva calls for a boycott over SB 1070, they ought to be ashamed. They are calling in the artillery to bomb our own troops. According to the Arizona Tourism Alliance web site, "The total (direct and secondary) impact on the Arizona travel industry in 2008 was 310,000 jobs." 310,000 jobs!

Arizona tourism can provide good paying jobs—and lots of tax income—right now if we can convince the world Arizona is the safe and unique place to visit it really is. Lowering taxes to the thousands of tourism businesses in Arizona won't help create job one, unless there are tourists and conferees here to serve. In fact, the current climate actually reduces tax income to the state: When the industry has no income, it pays no taxes. Additionally, state and municipal income from dedicated room taxes and user fees for items like car rentals and airports are shrinking.

There is a very real perception out there that Arizona is physically dangerous and politically toxic. We need leadership at every level to commit itself to making Arizona an attractive and safe option for tourism dollars. The damage to Arizona's brand is not irreparable, but it's going to be a long arduous struggle to get back our reputation. Maybe we can start by not shooting off our mouths without regard to the repercussions of expedient political hyperbole.