Wind Knocked Out of Cup Sales as Yachting Fans Fail to Book Rooms

Proponents of the America’s Cup promised that the world’s most famous yachting race would generate an economic boon for San Diego’s hotels.

But, with the world’s most famous sailboat race now under way, the largest out-of-town group in San Diego this week won’t be Italian nationals cheering for Il Moro or Kansans in support of native son Bill Koch.

Rather, it will include more than 15,000 doctors, nurses, researchers and exhibitors--along with spouses and friends--who will fill the San Diego Convention Center to review advances in the care and treatment of cancers.

For hoteliers who more than a year ago had the option of booking the oncology meeting or waiting for America’s Cup business to develop, it was an easy choice.

“A bird in the hand hand is worth two in the bush,” said Rushton Hays, president of the San Diego County Hotel/Motel Assn. “I don’t know of any (hotels) that held off booking a group or taking individual reservations . . . that offered money up front. We just can’t afford to do that.”

“Hardly anyone can afford to bet on the come in this business,” said Reint Reinders, president of the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau, or ConVis. “And, I don’t think many of our hoteliers ever expected the tremendous influx of people that everyone was talking about.”

Hoteliers also can’t ignore the fact that the oncology group--unlike the Cup--already has guaranteed it will return in 1998.

Consequently, the downtown Marriott hotel that is a stone’s throw from Dennis Conner’s now-silent America’s Cup compound will have fewer than 200 of its 1,355 rooms reserved each night for Cup tourists. The remaining rooms will be filled with oncology meeting attendees and their spouses.

Estimates on the Cup’s economic impact in San Diego have varied widely. In 1987, one group suggested that the Cup would generate a $1-billion economic windfall.

Back then, Cup officials believed that nearly two dozen racing syndicates from 15 countries would set up camp in San Diego for more than a year as they readied their boats and familiarized themselves with the race course off Point Loma.

Those racing syndicates would pump money into the local economy by renting homes, eating in restaurants and patronizing stores. Even more important, the syndicates would attract thousands of free-spending tourists from around the world.

But that best-case scenario slowly fell apart as the America’s Cup Organizing Committee, or ACOC, got embroiled in a nasty, two-year legal battle with Australian Michael Fay over where and how the race would be staged.

As that court case dragged on, a worldwide economic slowdown trimmed the discretionary spending of giant corporations needed to help finance sailing syndicates that spend upward of $65 million on a single Cup challenge.

Eventually, just eight syndicates took part in the race--an impressive number for race organizers but a disappointing number economically. The ACOC found itself with a serious cash-flow problem, forcing it to lay off staff people and cut back on planned events.

And, many foreign travelers responded to the worldwide economic turndown by staying at home.

Now, local hotel and convention officials aren’t sure what the eventual economic impact will be. The local tourism industry doesn’t have a system in place to accurately track the Cup’s economic impact, so estimates will probably be based on anecdotal data, Reinders said.

Spokesmen for ACOC and its licensed travel agency declined to speculate on how many tourists will be in town during the coming week to watch the Cup races.

Hotel industry consultant Robert Rauch earlier this year suggested that the race would generate somewhat less than $500 million, with the bulk of the tourists arriving this week. Rauch said the $1-billion estimate ignored the fact that most Cup-related tourism occurs during the final races, and that tourists generally ignore the many months of preliminary races.

ACOC President Malin Burnham said he is uncertain how many tourists the Cup races will draw to town. But Burnham argued that the economic impact, be it $1 billion or $100 million, isn’t important--as long as the Cup generates business that otherwise would have been absent in the community.

Although the Cup’s immediate economic return won’t match initial estimates, ConVis Chairwoman Anne Evans noted that extensive publicity generated by worldwide television coverage should serve the city well.

“We will be reaping a positive benefit from the America’s Cup for a decade,” Evans said. “This is the kind of publicity that you just can’t buy.”