American’s ‘Happy Hop’ a Boost for Merchants : South Coast Plaza Now on Tourists’ List

It has long been a favorite spot for locals to kill a day window-shopping and lunching, and now South Coast Plaza is being officially recognized as a national tourist attraction.

American Airlines, which picked up dozens of Southern California flights with its purchase of Newport Beach-based AirCal late last year, has included the Costa Mesa mall on a packaged tour of Southland attractions that includes Disneyland, the San Diego Zoo and Universal Studios.

The inclusion last month of South Coast Plaza on the airline’s nationally advertised two-, three-, and four-day “Happy Hop” tours should bring as many as 1,000 new shoppers a week to the mall, center officials say.

The shopping mall--with sales of $517 million last year--will be featured with perennial Orange County destinations--Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm--in the nationally distributed tour package brochures.

“This is a big thing, a big first,” said South Coast Plaza spokesman Werner Escher. “Now we’re seeing that shopping is not incidental to a trip. Disneyland may be incidental to a trip.”

South Coast Plaza officials approached AirCal executives with the idea more than six months ago, Escher said. When Dallas-based American purchased the local airline for $225 million in November, discussions continued with American representatives.

“We just feel that a lot of people coming into town--after going to Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm--are going to want to do some shopping when there’s a shopping center like South Coast Plaza around,” said John Fenyes, American’s product manager for sales development in Dallas.

Fenyes says South Coast Plaza’s inclusion two years ago in the Southland tours run by Anaheim-based Walt Disney Travel Co. helped get the center added to American’s tour packages.

In an informal survey of local travel agents, most said they have never heard of an airline billing a shopping center as a tourist attraction. “But I don’t see why not,” said one.