Return of the Tourist : O.C. Visitor, Spending Totals on Rise Again

Orange County’s tourism industry is inching out of the recession, with both the number of visitors and the money spent on entertainment last year higher than the year before despite riots in Los Angeles and earthquakes across Southern California.

The Anaheim Area Visitor Center and Convention Bureau, which tracks the county’s tourists, said that 37.7 million visited the area’s theme parks and beaches. That was up from 37.6 million visitors in 1991, convention center spokeswoman Barbara McClelland said.

In addition, she said, visitors spent $4.7 billion in Orange County for 1992, up from $4.5 billion for 1991.

The figures contradict the conventional wisdom that tourism in the county was hurt badly in 1992 by events in the news. Many thought that the spring’s riots and the summer’s earthquakes scared away enough people that the previous year’s downward trend in tourism would continue.

“The tourism business in . . . Orange County had its share of peaks and valleys in 1992 but remained steady overall,” the convention bureau wrote in its yearly report.

The tourist total had been falling since 1989, when 39.5 million visitors came to Orange County.

The fact that the visitor count increased last year is an early confirmation of a recent prediction by Chapman University economists that tourism, one of Orange County’s chief industries, is on the rise again. The university said in December that tourism will get help this year from the gradual easing of the global recession. Foreign tourists, Chapman said, will help lead the local economy out of its slump.

The convention bureau in its report said the same thing: Travelers from the Pacific Rim, particularly Japan, Australia and New Zealand, will give Orange County’s tourism industry a strong boost.