Picture a tropical island off the coast of the United States:

This island is known for powdery beaches, swaying palm trees and stunning sunsets. Because it’s an island, it’s surrounded by endless blue ocean.

This island has vibrant cities and quaint small towns.

This island has wonderful culinary traditions — lobsters pulled fresh from the ocean are broiled over roaring fires. Whole pigs are roasted with local root vegetables. Tourists and locals alike wash down their meals with potent tropical drinks made from local rum and fresh-picked pineapples, mangos, and coconuts.

This island is known the world over for native-born sports stars, politicians, actors, and musicians.

This island has a unique culture, indigenous music, and its own dances. Although English is widely spoken here, you’ll hear other languages wherever you turn. As such, the island is very exotic yet also resolutely American — mainland US visitors don’t need a passport or a visa. Plus their health care plans, driver’s licenses, and US currency all work just fine.

This island features soaring mountains, picturesque waterfalls, and lush rain forests. There are wonderful hotels here – beautiful resorts and small get-aways built steps away from the ocean. There’s a tradition of American military service, historical museums, and a significant and historical military base.

Finally, if you tire of the main island itself, there are smaller islands nearby that you can visit.

All in all, this island is a wonderful vacation spot and visited and dreamed of by millions of Americans.

Do you know what island I’m talking about? Your answer may be based on your geography, but I’m betting you’re thinking about Hawaii.

I was describing Puerto Rico. Interestingly enough, both islands offer all the amenities I’ve mentioned yet Hawaii has a memorable tourism brand and Puerto Rico is almost invisible. This difference between the two islands’ tourism business is a perfect example of my branding theory that consumers don’t buy what you do; they buy who you are.

Hawaii scores very high on many Americans’ lists of where they’d like to travel while Puerto Rico does not. In fact, in research we did just a few years ago, many respondents who were asked about Puerto Rico’s image mentioned West Side Story – a movie that was released 50 years ago this year. Worse, the story didn’t even take place in Puerto Rico – the Sharks and the Jets rumbled in New York!

This difference in consumer awareness and desire is especially odd when you consider how much further Hawaii is from the mainland US than Puerto Rico. Hawaii is almost six and one half hours away from Los Angeles, while Puerto Rico is less than two and one half hours from Miami and three and a half hours from New York. That means that Hawaii is two to three times as far away from 33% of the US population as Puerto Rico is from over half of all mainland Americans!

Needless to say, there are lots of reasons why Hawaii’s image is so much stronger than Puerto Rico’s and many of these reasons are things that Hawaii did right. But one of the biggest culprits is something that Puerto Rico does wrong: The machinations of its political system.

If you have lived on the island, one of your passions would probably be the commonwealth vs. statehood debate. This issue – the future of Puerto Rico’s American status – is so hotly debated by the populace that it’s called the island’s national sport. More than two thirds (71%) of Puerto Rico’s residents care about it enough to vote.

Unfortunately, this split causes the island’s governorship to change at almost every election, seesawing back and forth every four years between the parties favoring statehood and those supporting commonwealth status. Worse, the subject itself is argued out in the island’s tourism marketing because the prevailing parties use the island’s tourism budgets to fuel the island debate.

So a previous Puerto Rico tourism campaign, The Shining Star of the Caribbean, supported statehood (shining star – America – get it?) while the more recent Explore Beyond the Shore campaign supported commonwealth status (look inward, be our own island).

But here’s the worst part: No potential American tourist cares whether the island becomes a state or not; they’re just looking for a great place to take their families for a warm weather exotic vacation. And Puerto Rico would fill the bill exquisitely if only they could get the message out.

Thanks to American Airlines, there are wonderfully modern airports with great lift. Thanks to newly restored hotels, including the Conrad and the mid-century gem the La Concha, there are beautiful places to stay. Thanks to Puerto Rico’s mix of cultures, tourists can immerse themselves in Spanish but can resort to English whenever they feel the need. And thanks to the island’s unique status, American visitors don’t need a passport to visit.

Before you poo-poo this last point, keep in mind that according to the State Department only 22% of Americans have passports. So for a family of five to visit the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic or Jamaica, they’d have to shell out $575 before they even set foot out of the United States. Yet, when they visit Puerto Rico they can use that money for food and lodging, essentially extending their vacation by a day!

Of course it’s not too late for Puerto Rico to change its course. The Condado area has recently seen expanded investment and Old San Juan has also been spruced up. And as US travel requirements become more and more restrictive, more and more domestic residents will be looking for exotic alternatives without exotic price tags. But until Puerto Rico’s leadership stops fighting its on-island statehood squabble in the international media, I’m afraid Hawaii will still be the exotic island destination most mainland Americans will dream about.

After almost every punch line, a googly-eyed, sweating Rodney Dangerfield would tug at his tie and utter his famous line, “Awww, I don’t get no respect.”

Seems to me the entire travel and tourism industry could do the same thing. Tourism is a trade that encompasses so many different business sectors but has no single defining industry designation, and therefore, has no real way of demonstrating its value to the greater community.

Check the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) and you’ll find listings for Air Transportation; Aircraft-Aerospace Manufacturing; Amusement and Recreation; Fishing, Hunting, and Trapping; Food Preparations and Food Specialties; Hotel and Restaurant; Museums, Art Galleries, and Botanical and Zoological Gardens; and the Railroad Transportation Industries – all listed as separate sectors. And that list doesn’t even include limousines, cruise lines, sporting events, nor all of tourism’s supporting industries such as Legal, Accounting, HR, Real Estate, Retail, etc., etc., etc. Yet every one of those businesses owes some or all of its success to tourism.

Funny how things change in times of trouble, though. Now that BP is dolling out money to companies whose businesses have suffered due to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, it seems every business that might have ever received a dollar from a tourist’s wallet has its hand out for relief. Watching the evening news the other day, I saw a gas station owner from Palatka complaining that BP owed him money because tourists have stopped driving down to Florida. Even the Brass Monkey Lounge in Marathon filed a lawsuit against BP for diminished business.

As Judy Sorenson, owner of the bar, said in The Miami Herald, “It‘s still beautiful here, but people aren’t coming because they think the oil is here, even though it isn’t here. That’s killing the Keys.”

Maybe so, Judy; but it ain’t killing bars. The last thing people in the Keys are going to give up is booze. In fact, I’d bet that the worse the situation gets, the more they’ll drink.

Regardless of the economic realities, our tourism industry will keep stoking the economy – providing jobs, generating taxes and showing people the best parts of the United States, all without getting the respect it deserves. It’s so bad that even Rodney Dangerfield used to diss our industry: “Boy, what a hotel that was, why they stole MY towel! Then I asked the bellhop to handle my bag and he fondled my wife.”

I’m tellin’ you, we don’t get no respect.

Right now the oil moving inexorably towards our coastline is on everybody’s mind. The media has created the 24-hour news feed, the battle lines have been drawn between BP and the pelicans, and consumers are hanging onto the edges of their seats for the next update.

The consequences of this tragedy, perhaps the largest domestic environmental crises to date, will go on for decades. But what happens when the next great new event pushes the Deepwater Horizon off the front pages? What will be the long-lasting effects to the beachfront tourism industry from Texas to Florida and beyond?

Do you think the issue won’t go away that quickly? When was the last time you were glued to your TV to find out about conditions in Haiti, the Time-Square bomb scare or even health care reform? We Americans have a notoriously short attention span and when the media moves on, we do too.

Of course you know that just because the situation doesn’t make front-page headlines anymore doesn’t mean that everything is better. Far from it. Post earthquake-damaged Haiti is still the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and suffers from every possible ill of poverty, a non-existent infrastructure and aggressively corrupt leadership; it’s just that we’re not so actively involved anymore. Out of sight, out of mind is not just a glib saying; it’s an accurate description of our national attention deficit syndrome.

So maybe the cameras moving on to the next subject will be a good thing for tourism. After all, if pictures of gooey petroleum-soaked seabirds aren’t on our TV screens 24/7, visitors might forget about the oil and rebook their vacations. On the other hand, what happens if oil-fouled beaches are the last things consumers see before the cameras leave and there are no inviting images to change that perception?

As I wrote in my last post, the solution is not to tell people the reasons why they shouldn’t not come but instead to build compelling stories that connect with consumers’ emotions and build desire. I’m still waiting to see those campaigns from the affected destinations. Let’s hope they’re coming soon.