Summer Picture Brightens for S.D. Tourism Industry : Economy: Air, hotel price wars bode well for peak travel season.

San Diego County’s tourism industry is anxious to learn whether the recent air-fare war was strong enough medicine to cure out-of-state tourists who dropped plans for Southern California vacations because of the economic slowdown and the May riots that devastated South Central Los Angeles.

The now-completed air-fare war, which essentially cut ticket prices in half, also spawned a continuing fare war among major hotel chains--including Marriott, Hyatt, Sheraton and Hilton--that promises relatively deep discounts for travelers who book rooms at least two weeks in advance.

It’s too early to determine how many tourists will parlay the airline and hotel discounts into San Diego vacations during the all-important summer season. But the double-barreled cuts generated a definite sense of optimism that was notably absent just a few weeks earlier.

“The fare wars were a welcome relief from what had been a fairly gloomy outlook following the L.A. riots,” said San Diego Zoo spokesman Jeff Jouett. “If the airlines, the hotels and the attractions had gotten together and planned (the cuts), they would be patting themselves on the back. . . . It might not have been planned that way, but it’s coming together as a great cooperative effort.”

Bargain-basement air fares and hotel rates aren’t likely to increase travel by Southern Californians and Arizona residents who generally spend just a day in San Diego before driving home.

But San Diego should witness an increase in long-distance travelers, said Reint Reinders, president of the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau, or ConVis.

“It’s a very positive situation because what we’re trying to do is promote travel to San Diego,” Reinders said. But, he said, the the airline and hotel industries are “going out there and doing it for us. The low fares are going to get things going.”

“Now we’ve got to cross our fingers on the weather,” said an optimistic C. Michael Cross, general manager of Sea World of California, the aquatic theme park at Mission Bay. “What we don’t want is another summer like last summer,” when cloudy skies cast an uncommon summer-long shadow on San Diego, Cross said.

The lower airline and hotel rates will stimulate business--ConVis reported a substantial increase in telephone calls to member hotels--but “it’s really hard to put a number on it at this time,” Reinders said.

“I’m not seeing significant numbers of increases of people attributing their travel to discounted fares yet, but the operative word is yet, because most discounted flights won’t begin to kick in until later this month, said San Diego-based hotel industry consultant Bruce Goodwin.

The fare cuts are welcome news to the local tourism establishment because reduced fares should make vacations affordable to more Americans--and leave them more cash to spend on meals and trinkets.

That’s good news for the anemic tourism industry, which received a smaller-than-expected boost this spring from the America’s Cup regatta. The industry seems more confident about the boost it will get from the July 12 baseball All-Star game that will draw tens of thousands of free-spending sports fans into town for a two-day extravaganza.

But the air-fare war will have relatively little effect on expensive hotels that are largely filled by business and convention traffic or high-end tourists who aren’t dependent upon bargain fares.

Sheraton, for example, doesn’t expect a rush of reservations at its two hotels on Harbor Island and third property in La Jolla. “We’re pretty solidly booked already,” said Sheraton spokesman Bill Hastings. In many cases, he said, vacationers on bargain flights are going more for the budget hotels.

The air-fare war should generate business for less-expensive hotels, Goodwin said. “Either that or they’re going to be staying with grandma,” Goodwin said.

Yet, even if the fare wars generate only a small increase, it will be welcomed by a local industry that was “essentially stable” during the first quarter of 1992. Room occupancy rates were stuck at 61%, according to Smith Travel Research, and the total number of overnight visitors increased by just 1.2% to 2.6 million during the first quarter.

Reinders described that relatively lackluster performance as “significant” given a stalled national economy that pushed the U.S. jobless rate to an 8-year high of 8.7%.

The sluggish economy in California might even work to San Diego’s advantage if consumers who continue to cut back on discretionary spending opt for a quick San Diego visit instead of an expensive trip to Hawaii or back East.

Reinders discounted any long-term effect of the Los Angeles riots, noting that most Americans--and, increasingly, foreign tourists--soon forget bad news. Potential tourists who in May were reading about the riots spent the past two weeks “reading front-page stories about cheap air fares,” Reinders said.

Goodwin said that Pacific Rim travelers did cancel or postpone many trips immediately after the riots, but that most Americans and Europeans seemed willing to vacation in Southern California.

Even after the summer season ends, it will be difficult to determine how much of a boost the air-fare wars generated, Goodwin said.

That’s because many bargain tickets were grabbed by tourists who used them to cut the costs of previously purchased tickets, Goodwin said, and other tickets went to tourists who were going to travel with or without bargain fairs.

Even before the fare wars erupted, local attractions were doing their part to entice visitors into Southern California and San Diego.

Sea World is leading the attractions charge with its multimillion dollar Shark Encounters exhibit, scheduled to open June 20. The three-part attraction includes a 54-foot-long tunnel that gives visitors a chance to get breathtakingly close to the world’s largest collection of sharks.

The attraction, Sea World’s first major new attraction since Shamu Stadium opened in 1989, is “important because it gives people another reason to come visit us,” Cross said. “And that’s our reason for being in business.”

Elsewhere in Southern California, Magic Mountain is opening its eighth roller coaster, and Disneyland has added Fantasmic, a high-tech laser and water show.

Those two Los Angeles-area attractions “are actually good for San Diego because this business is synergistic,” Cross said. “It gives people more reasons to come to Southern California.”

The Wild Animal Park in Escondido is bringing back the popular dinosaur exhibit that was particularly successful in drawing youngsters to the park.

The San Diego Zoo won’t have a new exhibit ready until next year when “Gorilla Tropics II,” which will build upon the success of the popular Gorilla Tropics exhibit, will come on line.

The zoo will open its first sit-down restaurant in July. Albert’s, named after a popular gorilla at the zoo “will give visitors a change from the ever-popular hamburger,” Jouett said.

As important, the restaurant will bolster the zoo’s ability to host after-hours meetings and receptions. “We’ve got one of the premiere locations in the city, and we intend to use it,” Jouett said.

During 1993 the park also will install new lighting that will allow keepers to put animals on display until 10 p.m., well beyond the current 5 p.m. closing. “The night-time zoo experience will have a mystique all of its own,” Jouett said. “There will be a completely different ambience.”