WASHINGTON – Senators voted Wednesday to charge international travelers a $10 fee to help pay for a new nonprofit corporation to promote tourism in the United States.

The legislation, which passed 79-19, was backed by the travel industry. Lawmakers said many international governments aggressively help tourism in their countries by subsidizing promotional programs, but the United States leaves that work to the private sector and to state and local governments.

Much of the money for the promotional efforts will come from fees paid by the travel industry. The rest would come from the $10 fee on international visitors.

The United States began requiring people who do not need visas to enter the country to register online at least 72 hours before travel and renew their registration every two years. If the new proposal should become law, it would require people to pay the $10 fee when they register.

The European Union has said that some U.S. travelers to Europe could face retaliatory fees if the bill should pass. A similar bill has been proposed in the House of Representatives but has not been voted on. It would have to be passed and the two bills joined into a single piece of legislation to be signed into law.

Senators from states dependent on tourism, such as Florida and Nevada, led the effort to pass the bill, along with Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan, from the agricultural state of North Dakota, the bill’s chief sponsor.

“We desperately need jobs. We’re very dependent on tourism. This bill will help create tourism-type jobs, but it won’t just do it for Nevada,” said that state’s junior senator, Republican John Ensign. “When people come to our country to visit, they may come to one state primarily, but they usually stop in several other states along the way.”

Senators, citing data from industry sources, said ramped-up marketing efforts would lead to an additional 1.6 million international travelers coming to the United States annually, and they said those travelers spend about $4,500 per visit.

About 58 million international travelers visited the United States last year. Industry officials say many potential visitors are looking elsewhere because of enhanced border security since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and because of negative coverage from foreign media outlets.

In backing the legislation, Democrats also were looking to give Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid a boost as he seeks a fifth term representing Nevada in the Senate. In June, supporters could not generate the 60 votes needed to have an up-and-down vote on the legislation.

“He found a way to rescue this bill, bring it back to life,” said Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin, the Democrats’ second-ranking senator.

DALLAS – Summer has come and gone without giving much lift to the nation’s airlines.

The carriers offered fewer flights than a year ago, and they slashed prices to fill even that reduced supply of seats, according to August traffic reports released over the past week.

Discount airlines fared relatively better in the recession, as they lured vacationers with cheap fares.

Business travel remained extremely weak. Airlines don’t break out figures for business travel — they aren’t always sure whether passengers are flying for work or pleasure — but numbers from Continental gave a glimpse of the corporate-travel slump.

Continental regularly discloses a statistic called revenue per available seat mile, a closely watched indicator of financial performance in the airline world. The Houston-based airline estimated that the key measurement fell 17 percent from August 2008. That’s four times faster than the drop-off in traffic, and it indicated that many of the missing passengers are business travelers who used to pay top dollar for their seats in the front of the plane.

By this revenue-per-capacity measurement, August wasn’t quite as weak as July.

Kevin Crissey, an analyst for UBS, predicted that September will be worse — perhaps down more than 20 percent compared to September 2008.

But Helane Becker, an analyst for Jesup & Lamont Securities, said there was “a little bit of a rebound” in August figures, with smaller declines than in July. She said last-minute bookings and business traffic appear to be improving for September.

Jamie Baker, an analyst for JPMorgan, said Thursday that demand is “weak, but not as bad as feared.”

Baker upgraded stock in the parent companies of United Airlines and US Airways, citing less fear that they could be forced to seek bankruptcy protection. He said in a note to clients that he now expects all the major airlines to survive the slow winter period without filing for Chapter 11 help.

The JPMorgan analyst boosted United parent UAL Corp. to “overweight” from “underweight,” and raised US Airways Group Inc. to “neutral” from “underweight.” To offset those upgrades, Baker lowered JetBlue Airways Corp. and AirTran Holdings Inc. to “neutral” from “overweight.”

The nation’s four largest airlines all handled less traffic than they did in August 2008. Traffic is measured in miles flown by paying passengers.

August traffic fell 2.2 percent at Delta Air Lines Inc., the world’s largest airline company; 8 percent at A

American Airlines parent AMR Corp.; 3.3 percent at UAL; and 3.9 percent at Continental.

Two leading discount airlines did better. Traffic rose 1 percent at Southwest Airlines Co. and held steady at JetBlue. But August traffic fell 6.1 percent at AirTran.

The carriers have been reducing flights to cut capacity and match the weaker demand. Delta, including its Northwest Airlines unit, offered 3.2 percent less capacity last month than it did in August 2008. American slashed capacity by 9.4 percent, UAL trimmed 3.3 percent, and Continental cut 6 percent.