A Ho-Hum Summer for O.C.’s Tourist Biz : Recovery Predicted in 2000 When Construction Ends

After Year Two of construction chaos in Anaheim, a drop in John Wayne Airport travel and a summer of polluted waves in Surf City, Orange County’s tourist businesses are hoping for a boost from summer’s last hurrah, the Labor Day weekend.

And they’re already setting their sights on next year.

“The general consensus was that this summer was flat,” said Elaine Cali, spokeswoman for the Anaheim/Orange County Visitor and Convention Bureau.

Some small hotels did better than large convention facilities, as business groups avoided construction that also held down attendance at Disneyland. The work ultimately promises to provide billions of dollars in Anaheim improvements, including a new Disney theme park.

“It looks promising for next spring and summer,” when much of the heavy work will be complete, Cali said. “Certainly better than this year.”

Despite gas prices running $1.54 a gallon--33 cents higher than last year and far above the national average of $1.25--some 2.6 million Southland motorists will hit the road for the Labor Day weekend, the Automobile Club of Southern California estimated.

“The domestic economy continues to be strong,” said Michael Collins of the Los Angeles Convention & Visitors Bureau. “It’s no surprise discretionary travel continues to climb.”

Heavy air travel also was expected this weekend after a summer season that was stronger at Los Angeles International Airport than at John Wayne Airport.

For the first half of the year, passenger traffic at LAX was up 3%, airport spokesman Tom Winfrey said. In June alone, the airport handled 5.6 million passengers, with foreign travel up 7%.

At far smaller John Wayne, the number of passengers getting on or off airline flights declined 3.8% to 4.21 million in the first seven months. In July, airline traffic was down, but only by 0.1% at 682,317 passengers, spokeswoman Nghia Nguyen said, another reflection of the county’s flat tourist season.

In a bright spot for the industry, foreign travel to Southern California picked up along with the recovering Asian economies, said Bruce Baltin of PKF Consulting, which tracks the hospitality industry.

“Over the last three to four months, the international market is starting to come back,” Baltin said--good news for tourist businesses, since foreign travelers on average spend more than their domestic counterparts.

The summer was particularly good for Los Angeles County hotels, which filled about 78% of their rooms while still charging higher rates than last year. Baltin said Los Angeles hotel occupancy rose 2% in June and about 5% in July.

Meanwhile, occupancy in Orange County during June, July and August was 76%, barely up from 75% in 1998. And at least through the beginning of summer, the Orange County room rates were on average no higher than a year earlier, Baltin said.

Attendance fell at the region’s foremost tourist attraction, Disneyland, during the first half of the year, according to a Walt Disney Co. report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The park has no major new attraction this year and has been hurt by the construction and by people postponing visits until the new park opens in 2001.

While Disneyland officials won’t discuss figures, employees concur that attendance continued to slip this summer compared with last year, when the park opened its remodeled Tomorrowland section.

“It may be worse for the company, but it’s nice for us,” said one worker who fields customer complaints. Sparser crowds at the park make for happier visitors, the employee said. “It’s been a mellow place to work this summer.”

At Knott’s Berry Farm, officials reported better attendance thanks to new rides. And farther north, Universal Studios and Six Flag Magic Mountain both reported larger crowds this summer over last.

But while more people rode roller coasters, fewer rode the waves.

The most publicized downturn was in Huntington Beach, where a mysterious plume of pollution prompted closures of various stretches of oceanfront until it was deemed safe to reopen just in time for the Labor Day holiday.

Elsewhere, the weather was blamed for a decline in beach traffic. Danny Douglas, a lifeguard at Santa Monica Beach, said cool temperatures and overcast skies kept many away.

“We didn’t have quite the crowds we had last year,” a time of record high temperatures and high surf kicked up by the El Nino weather phenomenon.

Newport Beach hotel occupancy was running 72.4% through July, up from 70.4% last year.

But 1998 was a bad year for the city’s hotels, which never recovered from El Nino torrents early on.

This year’s occupancy is still well below the 74.4% recorded from January through July, 1997, said Rosalind Williams, executive director of the Newport Beach Conference & Visitors Bureau.

Newport wound up benefiting from Huntington Beach’s woes, Williams said.

“We actually have had an increase in our [beach] traffic,” she said, “because folks have come down here instead.”

Foreign Aid

A rise in foreign visitors - who on average spend more money that domestic travelers - has helped make it a good summer for tourism in Los Angeles County. In 1998, foreign tourists represented 33% of the spending, even though they made up only 23% of the total tourist visits.

Tourist visits in 1998

Foreign tourists: 5.3 million

Domestic tourists: 1.8 million

Tourist spending in 1998

Foreign tourist spending: $3.9 billion

Domestic tourist spending: $7.9 billion

*

Source: Los Angeles Times and Visitors Bureau