In what’s considered a season of traditions, San Diego’s tourism industry is looking to break a longstanding one , in which the slowest visitor business of the year comes during the winter holidays.
As opposed to the summer months, in which hotels’ occupancy rates often surge to 80 percent and higher, bookings drop off during the period that begins around Thanksgiving and ends in mid-January.
December, for instance, sees the smallest numbers all year. The occupancy rate was 51.4 percent in 1999, 53.7 percent in 1998, 54.2 percent in ’97 and 53.4 percent in ’96, according to the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau.
To combat the slow time, the industry, led by ConVis, has banded together for a $60,000 print and radio ad campaign with a new angle.
The new focus is local residents, who often host relatives and friends for the holidays.
According to ConVis, 44 percent of all visitors to San Diego each year stay with residents.
Through radio and print ads, the campaign suggests that instead of having relatives stay with them, residents can book them hotel rooms.
Many of the hotels participating in the marketing program have discounted their rooms by 20 percent.
According to Sal Giametta, ConVis’ vice president of community relations, the bureau’s research revealed that nearly half of San Diego’s overnight visitors during the holiday season come to visit friends and family.
Local Marketing Opportunity
Giametta considers it “an opportunity to remind locals that there are some great hotel deals going on in the local marketplace during that time,” he said.
“While they certainly want to be hospitable, there’s certainly nothing wrong with them telling their friends and relatives, ‘Hey, look at the hotel down the street, we have great places for you to stay,'” he said.
“It’s kind of whimsical on that note,” he admitted, “but it’s also very timely from the standpoint that we recognize that we have a great market internally, in terms of San Diegans hosting their friends and family members throughout the year, but particularly during the holiday season.”
It’s a market to which ConVis rarely advertises, Giametta said.
Since 1993, ConVis has run a holiday campaign directed at San Diego’s prime tourism markets, such as Phoenix and Orange County. The campaign, called “San Diego for the Holidays,” suggests the reasons that make San Diego a summer destination, such as the weather and attractions, also make it a good place to visit for the holidays.
As for the new local program, Giametta said ConVis hopes to do it annually. The campaign will likely be evaluated in the spring before any decisions are made, he said.
By the week before Thanksgiving, more than 70 rooms have been booked through the ConVis Web site featured on the campaign’s ads, Giametta said.
As of Nov. 27, 156 rooms had been booked, he said.
Viable Market
Robert Rauch, a local hotel analyst, considers the friends-and-family market a viable one for holiday tourism.
“I think we’re seeing more and more of it in San Diego,” he said.
Rauch also thinks this New Year’s will be a strong one for the local tourism market, particularly because it will be well timed with the Culligan Holiday Bowl on Dec. 29.
“I think the Holiday Bowl will be an enormous success this year,” Rauch said.
As for the upcoming New Year’s, which falls on a Sunday, he said, “It works at the back-end of a weekend so I think coupled with the potential for a Friday-through-Monday long weekend and the Holiday Bowl, I think it bodes well.”
Consumer confidence is also running high, noted Luis Barrios, president of the San Diego County Hotel-Motel Association.
Barrios compared it to last year, in which millennium hype turned into unexceptional results for the hospitality industry.
“There’s no apprehension,” he said. “There’s a lot of confidence. I think the economy will keep doing great, so we expect a very healthy holiday season.”
