On his recent Mideast tour, President George Bush spent a night in the “Ruler’s Suite” at Abu Dhabi’s Emirates Palace Hotel. According to columnist Maureen Dowd, the cozy suite includes its own ballroom. Room rates at the $3 billion seven-star hotel range from $1,598 to $12,251. At those rates, I don’t think I’d be able to sleep.

If you said New York City, guess again. According to a Hogg Robinson Group survey of the first six months of 2007, New York’s Average Daily Rate (ADR) of $362 was second on the list, more than $100 less than Moscow’s runaway ADR of $474. Dubai, Paris and Banagalore (India) rounded out the top five.

Thomas Friedman, who wrote the bestseller “The World Is Flat,” noted an exception in his newspaper column today. The United States, he wrote, has lost millions of overseas visitors since 9/11–even though the dollar is weak and America is “on sale.” He quoted Roger Dow, president of the Travel Industry Association, who told Friedman that “among major countries, only the U.S. is losing traveler volume…the U.S. entry process has created a climate of fear and frustration that is turning away foreign business and leisure travelers and hurting America’s image abroad.” Total business arrivals to the U.S. fell by 10% from 2004 to 2005; during the same time period, arrivals to Europe grew an estimated 8%.

On Tuesday, the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates, a boon for markets around the world. Yesterday, the other shoe dropped. The weakened U.S. dollar fell to a new low against the euro and is now on par with the Canadian dollar for the first time in 30 years. With international visitors stoking demand and driving rates higher in U.S. gateway cities, many associations have been drawn to the price/value equation touted by “emergent” (formerly known as second- and third-tier) destinations. Cities with new or expanded convention centers and additional hotel capacity now boast infrastructures capable of hosting all but a handful of the very largest trade show events.

The International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) tracks a variety of statistics on international meetings. In a sample of 5,838 events staged in 2006, the United States ranked first, hosting 414 events (7.1%). The bad news is that the number slipped from 499 in 2005, continuing a precipitous decline from the 2000 peak of 10.2%. The downward trend, an aftershock of 9/11, is projected to continue for years to come.