REGIONAL REPORT : Malaise in Vacation Land : Tourism: Across the Southland, business is sluggish. High prices and image are partly to blame.

Pick a reason: gang activity, high theme-park fees, a slowing economy, aerospace layoffs and competition from Florida. All are cited as reasons for the weakness of tourism in Southern California this year.

Most of Southern California’s theme parks are reporting sharp declines in attendance--in some cases by as much as 10%. A higher share of the hotel rooms in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties are empty. And the flow of out-of-state visitors into California has slowed.

The tourism malaise in Southern California--where famous beaches, amusement parks and shopping hubs have long been a powerful magnet--is a matter of considerable economic importance.

Travelers spend about $40 billion every year in California, making it one of the state’s biggest industries and one that employs half a million people. In San Diego alone, tourism accounts for about 6% of the county’s $52-billion economy.

The weakness in tourism is widespread. In San Diego, attendance is down at almost every attraction. Turnstile clicks through May declined by 10% at Sea World, 5% at the San Diego Zoo, 13% at the Old Town State Park and 5% at Cabrillo Point National Monument--and the trend has continued through the summer.

At Knott’s Berry Farm, attendance is off “5% or more from last year,” according to spokesman Stuart Zanville. Disneyland does not release attendance figures for its Anaheim or Orlando, Fla., theme parks, the largest in the industry, but Merrill Lynch analyst Harold L. Vogel said Disney attendance is unchanged from 1989.

“We’re pretty much flat,” said Michele Reese, executive vice president of marketing for Universal Studios Hollywood. In 1989, the first year that its heavily advertised Earthquake ride was open, Universal Studios’ attendance jumped to 5.1 million from 4.2 million in 1988. “It is not just an L.A. or a Southern California disease, it seems to be nationwide,” she said.

The arrival of Dick Tracy and Batman has not been able to rescue the Hollywood Wax Museum from an 11% decline in summer attendance. “This is the first time time in seven or eight years that we have had to be concerned about a drop” in business, said manager Raubi Sundher.

Hotel operators, already reeling from a glut in hotel rooms, are also feeling the effects of the tourism slump. San Diego County hotel occupancy for the first five months of 1990 was 62.9%, down from 66.7% last year. Despite the opening of the San Diego Convention Center on Jan. 1, touted as a huge tourism generator, the number of overnight guests in San Diego is up only 2% this year.

Hotel occupancy is off similarly in Orange and Los Angeles counties, said Rick Schwartz, an accountant in the Irvine office of Pannell Kerr Forster.

Economic uncertainty is keeping out-of-state tourists at home, officials say.

“Most people feel that the economy is getting soft, and that is affecting travel,” said Al Reese, vice president of the San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau. “Discretionary travel is discretionary spending, and when people feel less confident about the economy, they are likely to cut their discretionary spending.”

Reese’s view is backed by exit surveys at several theme parks. Robert Gault, president of Sea World of California in San Diego, which was acquired last year by Anheuser-Busch along with three other Sea Worlds, went so far as to describe a “national malaise” in travel and tourism.

“That’s the primary problem we are facing,” he said. “We are doing well (attracting tourists) from Los Angeles and San Diego. We are up 14% in international visitors. But there is a dramatic turndown in domestic travel. Our out-of-state business is down.”

Merrill Lynch’s Vogel noted that the consumer is “stretched” with high debts and that job growth has slowed nationwide, two negative trends for tourism. “When the economy is in transition or going sideways, you get reluctance on the part of people to spend on these things,” Vogel said.

A leveling off of theme park attendance is to be expected after several years of overall growth, said Mark Manson, an entertainment analyst at the Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette investment firm in New York. “Theme parks historically have been economically sensitive. It’s not cheap to go,” Manson said.

Michael Collins, vice president of public affairs for the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau, said Los Angeles’ tourist trade has been sluggish for several years. The annual number of visitors who stayed at Los Angeles County hotels and motels peaked in 1986 at 12.8 million and now hovers around 12 million.

Los Angeles officials offer numerous reasons for the slide: a soft market for domestic travelers, aggressive campaigns to lure conventions and conferences to Orange and San Diego counties, and signs of a weakening national economy. But topping the list is the city’s tarnished image, tourism officials and merchants say.

“The word ‘gang’ is synonymous with Los Angeles,” said Ann Gruberman, owner of Crystal Emporium, a gift shop at Farmers Market. On top of that is concern about the overall expense of visiting Los Angeles. “A lot of people say it’s a rip-off city,” Gruberman says. “After a tourist is through paying for his lodgings and meals, what does he have left?”

Glen Alder, director of marketing for Starline and Gray Line Tours, which reported a 5% decline in its summer bus tour business, said “a lot of bad publicity (is) going on about Los Angeles--gangs, drive-by shootings, earthquakes, you name it. . . . Most of the talk you hear about Los Angeles is negative at this point. So no one is interested in coming.”

The image problem may have triggered a decline in the number of Japanese tourists, despite a strong flow of foreign visitors overall, say travel officials. “They could come in August, but I have not seen them so far,” said Monique Bourget, manager at Aahs Westwood card shop. “A lot of people are not shopping in Westwood right now.”

Zanville of Knott’s Berry Farm said Southern California’s image plays a major role in the competition with central Florida to woo out-of-state tourists.

“If you’re sitting there with two travel brochures, one for Southern California and one for Florida, then you turn on the news that night and hear about another drive-by shooting or another brush fire (or) about how bad the air is, you’re going to say, ‘Let’s choose Florida.’ ”

Reese of Universal Studios criticized the level of tourism promotion done by the state. According to the California Office of Tourism, California’s $5.3-million annual promotion budget ranks 23rd among all states, far behind the $22.5 million spent by Hawaii and $22 million in out-of-state promotion budgeted by New York and Illinois.

“We’ve got the ninth-largest tourist economy in the world, and we only spend $5.5 million to attract that,” she said.

Admission price hikes at Southern California’s theme parks may also be turning off potential visitors, said Harrison Price, a Torrance-based industry consultant who estimates that there has been a 10% decrease in overall Southern California theme park attendance this year.

“There’s been a gradual escalation of costs to the consumer that has exceeded inflation, and I think they have pushed it a little too far,” said Price.

Adult admission for one day at Disneyland costs $25.50, up from $21.50 two years ago. Knott’s Berry Farm costs $21, compared to $17.95 two years ago. Sea World charges adults $21.95, up $2 from 1988, and the San Diego Zoo charges $10.75, up from $8.50 two years ago.

“Maybe (the hikes) are starting to catch up,” said Jan Schultz, former president of Sea World of California and now a tourism consultant. “You take a family of four and you’re looking at a per-capita expenditure of $27 to $30, or $120 for the day. . . . By the same token, it’s a bargain compared to admission prices in Florida.”

The summer has not proved lackluster for all Los Angeles tourist destinations, however. Catalina Island reported that the number of June visitors increased by 8,000 from the same month last year, and an exhibit commemorating the centennial of Yosemite National Park increased attendance at the Huntington Library and Gardens in San Marino by nearly 7,500.

Officials at the Queen Mary and Spruce Goose Entertainment Center in Long Beach said attendance was also up, thanks to a yearlong promotion and increased spending on advertising and marketing.

Magic Mountain, the amusement park in Valencia that drew 3.15 million visitors in 1989, is one of the region’s few attractions reporting a 1990 increase. Attendance there is up 10% so far this year, spokeswoman Courtney Simmons said, despite a sluggish June that saw a significant decline in out-of-state visitors.

Business at the Ojai Valley Inn & Country Club in Ventura County was temporarily hurt because of publicity about the brush fires that ravaged neighborhoods in Santa Barbara, said Alex Frankel, the inn’s marketing director.

But Frankel said the 218-room inn and golf resort, which is near Santa Barbara, is already “ahead of last year” and predicted that it will do better this summer than last. Frankel attributed the improvement to a renovation of the inn and an advertising campaign in national publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, Sunset magazine and Golf Digest.

At the NBC studios in Burbank, where visitors tour production facilities, “it’s slower than we anticipated, for sure,” said Jan Wildman, director of guest relations. But she couldn’t account for it, saying, “There doesn’t seem to be anything we’re doing differently.”

However, she said tourist demand for tickets to the “Tonight Show,” starring Johnny Carson, which is filmed at the same location, is not down. “There are still people who plan their vacations around seeing the show,” she said.

Times staff writers Anne Michaud, John Medearis, James Peltz and Jesus Sanchez contributed to this report.

HOTEL OCCUPANCY Hotel occupancy rates for the first five months of each year LOS ANGELES COUNTY 1990: 67.7% 1989: 71.2% ORANGE COUNTY 1990: 65.5% 1989: 67.4% SAN DIEGO COUNTY 1990: 62.9% 1989: 66.7% Source: Pannell Kerr Forster