Pleasant Travel Service Reports Surge in Hawaii Trips

If tourism is any indicator, Ventura County is staging a modest economic comeback, while Southern California and the nation as a whole are doing considerably better than that.

Travel executives at the county’s hotels and resorts report revenue gains of 5% to 10% over 1993.

Encouraging as that may be for innkeepers, it pales in comparison to what’s happening at Westlake Village-based Pleasant Travel Service. Pleasant Travel, operator of the Pleasant Hawaiian Holidays package tours, said its business to the islands is up 40% to 50% over last year, and is twice as strong as it was in 1992.

The big upswing means people are in a spending mood both nationwide and in Southern California, which is Pleasant Travel’s No. 1 market, company spokesman Ken Phillips declared.

One of Ventura County’s largest tourist destinations, the Mandalay Beach Resort in Oxnard’s Channel Islands Harbor, said its business is up 6% to 7% this year over 1993.

Room occupancy exceeded 90% this summer and is currently running at better than 70%, sales director Liz Stuart reported.. “We’re well booked with group meetings through Thanksgiving,” she said. “Things will drop off after that. They’ll start coming back in about mid-January.”

Business is up 10% this year at Channel Islands Hotel Properties, a group of hotels owned by Oxnard-based Martin V. Smith & Associates.

The group’s Casa Sirena Marina Resort in Channel Islands Harbor is attracting some off-season vacation guests though not at last summer’s hectic pace, according to marketing director Beverly Bobo.

Another Smith property, the Oxnard Hilton, located in that city’s Financial Plaza, is benefiting from an influx of travelers doing business with the new Oxnard Factory Outlet mall, Bobo added.

Occupancy is “definitely up” this year at the Ojai Valley Inn & Country Club, but marketing director Alison Brainard declined to be specific. She said the well-known inn is offering bargain rates on some rooms this winter. Brainard also disclosed that the inn’s recently named general manager, Peter Henry, left in October. He had only held the position since May. The inn’s owner, Chicago’s Henry Crown Co., cited “philosophical management differences” in announcing Henry’s sudden departure, Brainard said.

Ventura’s tourism coordinator Debbie Solomon said overnight stays by tourists were up 5.6% last summer over 1993. Tourism contributed $146 million to Ventura’s economy in the year ended June 30, Solomon added.

As they have in the past, Oxnard and Ventura will attempt to lure visitors during the holiday season with festivals and harbor parades of lighted boats. Admittedly, however, winter isn’t the best time of year for tourism in Ventura County.

That’s hardly the case at Pleasant Travel. “The holidays are one of our busiest periods,” Phillips said. “Already, our bookings are very tight for the two to three days before both Christmas and New Year’s Day. I’d advise people to be flexible if they’re planning to go to the islands in December.”

Pleasant Travel expects to book 225,000 to 240,000 travelers to Hawaii this year. The firm has its own airline and owns five hotels in the islands. It also has arrangements to book its clients into an additional 100 hotels and resorts.

The boom that Pleasant is enjoying in Hawaii isn’t being duplicated in Mexico, where the company launched Pleasant Mexico Holidays early last year. “Our business in Mexico has increased some, but people seem to have been upset by the political upheavals there, even though the beach resorts where we’re active haven’t been affected.”