54.3 F
San Diego
Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
-Advertisement-

Profile Kurt Burkhart’s travels land him in Carlsbad, where he dives into his duties as tourism director



Title:

Executive director, Carlsbad Convention & Visitors Bureau


Birthplace:

Bethesda, Md.


Residence:

Carlsbad


Education:

B.A. in history and political science, High Point University


Family:

Wife, Harumi


Hobbies:

Shotakan karate, scuba diving, hiking, traveling


Kurt Burkhart’s Travels Land Him In Carlsbad, Where He Dives Into His Duties as Tourism Director

When asking people about Kurt Burkhart, the new executive director of the Carlsbad Convention & Visitors Bureau, one word keeps coming up: energy.

“When you meet with him, he gets on a roll and he’s all charged up about what he’s currently engaged in,” said Ron Evans, who is a member of the Flagstaff, Ariz., Tourism Commission. Evans oversaw Burkhart in his former position as director of the Flagstaff Convention & Visitors Bureau.

In his four months in Carlsbad, Burkhart’s made a similar impression with the bureau’s board of directors.

“I just can’t tell you how energetic and how enthusiastic he is,” said Carlsbad hotelier Norine Sigafoose, who chairs the board.

Even with comments like that, you might be a little dubious. Until, that is, you sit across from Burkhart for a time and he talks about his work.

Within moments, the kinetic quality shows itself.


Addressing Large Issues

Burkhart, 48, plunges into some of the bigger issues facing Carlsbad as a visitor and convention destination. One of the first to come up, ironically, is the energy crisis.

He’s worried about how rising gas prices will affect Carlsbad’s drive market.

Most of the city’s out-of-town visitors come from Los Angeles, Orange County, San Bernardino, Riverside and the greater San Diego area. The city’s secondary market is Arizona.

“That ought to be a concern for any destination,” Burkhart said of the rising cost of gasoline. “How we are looking at addressing that is staying top of mind with visitors,” he said.

Bolstering the market’s awareness of Carlsbad is also the answer for another issue facing the tourism industry: consumer confidence in the face of layoffs, potential lost bonuses and other signals of the economy’s downturn.

Burkhart sees it as another opportunity for his bureau.

The idea: If people who would normally make a more expensive trip to an island or tropical setting are worried about their travel budgets, show them Carlsbad as a more cost-effective vacation spot.

Rather than relying solely on buying advertisements, Burkhart plans to use promotion and public relations to keep Carlsbad in publications’ editorial content.

When he uses advertising, however, he has to be careful how he leverages his bureau’s $92,000 marketing budget. He tends to enter cooperative advertising campaigns with other Carlsbad, San Diego or statewide organizations.

The bureau’s annual budget adds up to $425,000, with money from the county, members of the hospitality industry, the county and the city’s intake of hotel taxes.

Carlsbad generates the second highest hotel taxes in the county, $8.2 million in its last fiscal year, up from $6.9 million the year before.

Burkhart came into what could have been an awkward position. His predecessor had led Carlsbad’s tourism efforts for 10 years until his retirement last year.

“It was a little scary that we had to start fresh with someone,” Sigafoose says, “but Kurt just took over and just ran with it, and he’s still doing that.”

Burkhart was born in Bethesda, Md., one of two sons of a career Navy officer and a former stewardess. His roots in tourism run deep, he mentions good naturedly: His parents met during a flight.

While attending High Point University in North Carolina, Burkhart studied history and political science, with an emphasis on Asian studies and U.S. political trends.

At the time, in the ’60s, he volunteered for political campaigns and even envisioned himself ending up president of the country.

A life in politics turned out to be more expensive than he guessed. When he decided he needed to make a better living, he took a job with the Federal Elections Commission.

At the beginning of his three years there, Burkhart ran into a labor-related problem connected to his previous job that inspired his next career move in 1979, working for the National Employees Labor Union.

When his department faced cutbacks in the early ’80s, Burkhart found himself in the job market once more. He and some former political action committees colleagues put out two series of PAC directories.

Burkhart then went into finance. He spent five years as a retail trader and one year as an institutional trader. He then took the money he saved from his bonuses and started Virginia Pressure Cleaning.


Island Adventures

It was then that the North Pacific came calling.

In January 1992, Burkhart’s good friend visited after moving to Saipan in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. That friend, Steve Pixley, explained how Burkhart’s wife, a lawyer, could also get a job there.

It happened to be the coldest day that winter, and after five minutes on the road, Burkhart and his wife made the decision to go.

Within five months, Burkhart was in Saipan. He started working at the commonwealth government’s office of personnel, doing supervisor and management training.

As a new governor was taking office, Burkhart was asked to join a speechwriting subcommittee for the inauguration. Within two weeks of the inauguration, he became deputy public information officer. In his position, he was the principal speechwriter. He later became the governor’s adviser on tourism and trade.

In mid-1994, while watching a Tom Cruise movie, “Cocktail,” which took place in a tropical setting, Burkhart saw it was filmed in Florida. With the support of the governor, he began a film commission and began soliciting film productions on behalf of the Northern Mariana Islands.

After his boss lost the next election, Burkhart, who had divorced and remarried, owned an adventure dive and tour company in Saipan with his new wife.


Back In The States

But after Saipan’s economy started to sour in the late ’90s, the couple decided to move back to the United States.

It took Burkhart seven months to find a job, mostly because would-be employers had trouble understanding why he didn’t have more recent experience in the United States.

He had considered working in communications, stemming from his experiences as a public information officer.

When someone casually suggested he pursue the tourism industry, and that there was a position in Flagstaff, however, Burkhart was intrigued.

Of 66 original candidates, he was hired and stayed there for 1 & #733; years. Among other tasks, he retooled the city’s marketing plan, instilling a new tagline: “Flagstaff: They don’t make towns like this anymore.”

Only a couple of months into the Flagstaff job, Burkhart got a call from a headhunter. Only a return to a seaside setting would appeal to him, he said at the time.

The call last September informing Burkhart of the opening in Carlsbad presented that chance, along with a way to move closer to his parents, who now live in the Bay area.

His first day at the Carlsbad bureau was two days before Christmas.

“What Carlsbad brings, and what I find so exciting about this,” he says, “is that between Los Angeles and San Diego, California’s Gold Coast, you’ve got just an abundance of coastal communities and inland attractions that have always been a good draw for domestic and international travel.”

Burkhart considers the industry from his own varied background.

“As you can see, I look at tourism from an economic component and see what the importance is how it helps to support and sustain the livelihood of a state economy,” he says. “I see this as a viable economic component.”

Also, he says, “Having been a business person through all of my experience in the past, I look at this as a business person, first and foremost.”

It may be a business, but the trappings of tourism’s media connections still give him a thrill.

He grins as he recalls a correspondence of several years ago. His film office in Saipan was negotiating with a project he thought could have brought a lot of exposure to the island.

Although the project couldn’t find backing at the time, it did a couple years later.

It was the CBS hit, “Survivor.”

-Advertisement-

Featured Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-

Related Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-