GILROY
– With the economy in the doldrums and stays in the city’s
hotels and motels in decline for a second straight year, the Gilroy
Visitors Bureau is looking to get creative to attract overnight
guests here.
With both corporate and tourist overnight traffic down, bureau
officials are exploring a new area for a jump-start: increasing
number of sports tournaments, concerts and special events such as
family reunions held in the city.
GILROY – With the economy in the doldrums and stays in the city’s hotels and motels in decline for a second straight year, the Gilroy Visitors Bureau is looking to get creative to attract overnight guests here.
With both corporate and tourist overnight traffic down, bureau officials are exploring a new area for a jump-start: increasing number of sports tournaments, concerts and special events such as family reunions held in the city.
The idea is to give a more cautious, homebound and penny-pinching populous another reason to come to the city, besides pure tourism or business travel.
“We’re trying to find ways to get people to come to town during a time when they’re not traveling,” said Kirsten Carr, the bureau’s executive director. “Families will still go to their child’s soccer game or softball tournaments, whereas they may not spend the weekend (only) shopping or wine tasting.
“But if we can get them to come for one, maybe they’ll do them all,” she said. “We’re trying to be very creative.”
The city’s revenues from the transit occupancy tax or “bed-tax” – an indicator of overnight tourism – are projected to drop for the second year in a row after several years of relatively steady growth during flush times in the late 1990s. The tax is a 9 percent charge levied on the price of a night’s stay at a hotel or motel.
City officials have projected the occupancy tax income for this fiscal year at roughly $761,158 – a 12.6 percent drop over last year and a roughly 18 percent plunge from Gilroy’s highest level ever in 2000-01, before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Indeed. At the Forest Park Inn on Leavesley Road, owner George Sammut said business is at an all-time low – and he said the situation probably isn’t much better elsewhere around town.
“I’d venture to say the entire motel business in this town is on its back right now,” said Sammut, a Visitors Bureau board member. “Everyone’s doing the best they can to keep their head above water.”
The suffering is due to a combination of factors, bureau officials said.
The city’s motel market is a largely corporate market, Sammut said – but with the burst of the dot-com bubble and the 9-11 attacks, corporate travel has plummeted.
Meanwhile, Morgan Hill also has added several new hotels in recent years that act as a “filter” on visitor traffic headed south to Gilroy from San Jose, he said.
Between the two, “very, very little has trickled down now” to Gilroy, he said.
Meanwhile, overnight tourism has also slimmed due to the economy and current national political tension, Carr said.
“There are people losing their jobs daily,” she said. “People are being more cautious, and they’re not going to spend (as much) money on travel right now …
“We’re all watching what’s going on nationwide, and people are more cautious,” she added. “People feel more homebound right now.”
That has the bureau looking at the alternate draws, such as the sports tournaments.
Bureau officials say Gilroy already has benefits for those events such as constant good weather and recreational facilities, as well as ancillary attractions such as restaurants and the outlets. The city is also in a relatively central location in California and is more affordable than nearby locales such as Monterey.
“With that in mind, that’s one thing we could possibly upgrade in this town to bring people in on weekends,” Sammut said. “When a softball tournament or swim meet comes to town, it brings a tremendous amount of people.”
The bureau is looking at trends in recreational travel – what people are traveling for, what facilities and opportunities are available in the city, what aren’t and how accessible they are.
Carr is talking to tournament-friendly cities to examine their techniques and strategies. She also is compiling a list of different athletic organizations in Gilroy – from Little League to swim teams – in hopes of increasing dialogue to help boost promotion.
“We want a better relationship with various sports organizations in town so we know who might be interested in hosting a tournament and they know what we can do to help make that happen,” she said.
Sammut said the bureau is also planning to meet with city officials as early as this week to discuss the situation, find out what the criteria are for allowing or promoting tournaments and events here and determine how to make them more feasible.
“The key is to make it easy for these people to do,” he said. “The tax money these people will generate in one weekend is a lot of money. It’s not just occupancy tax, but they have to eat, fill their cars and more than likely will hit the outlets.”
While tax revenues are down, the number of hits on the bureau’s Internet site and directory have roughly doubled over this time last year, Carr noted. For example, in February 2002, the site drew roughly 4,600 hits. This year it had more than 11,000 visitors.
The bureau has made a conscious effort to plug the site in its advertising, Carr said. It may also mean that people still have travel on their horizons, but the execution isn’t quite there yet.
“It may mean people are still planning trips, but may not have actually done them yet,” Carr said.
