George: "It's SHRINKAGE!!!"
Posted on 02/17/2009 9:22:53 AM PST by SmithL
The Northern California Visitor Industry Outlook Conference takes place today in San Francisco. The outlook is not good. In fact, it's gotten worse since the last time this column broached the subject back in December. "There's a world shrinkage in travel. There's no way we can avoid it," said Joe D'Alessandro, CEO of the San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau. Tourism is San Francisco's biggest industry. In 2007, the 16.1 million visitors who came to the city spent $8.24 billion and generated $499 million in taxes.
D'Alessandro said he doesn't expect Europeans and Asians, stuck in their own deepening recessions, to be traveling abroad much this year. He also expects a nosedive in U.S. corporate travel, the result not only of company cost-cutting, but of the negative publicity surrounding high-rolling corporate out-of-town festivities. "There's just a lot of uncertainty and unease in business circles about traveling these days," D'Alessandro said. "Until there's more confidence, it's not likely to improve." Today's conference, featuring a range of industry professionals, is open to the public. It runs from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Hilton, 333 O'Farrell St. The price is $158 to $190. For more information, go to sfcvb.org/members/events.asp.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Tourism is going through the roof in San Antonio.
Texas - Red
SF - Blue
Hmm... Nothing to see here. Moveon...
Or because of the ridiculous prices in a recession?
Or the perverts on parade?
I sure will do what I can to support that message!!!
George: "It's SHRINKAGE!!!"
Oh, I’m sure the next Folsom Street Fair will bring in butt-loads of tourists.
But, but, there should be a boom in ‘gay’ marriage group packages. Right? That should draw thousands of regular folks.
The costs of doing anything in San Francisco are considerably higher than anywhere else in the country. The problem is that the city budget for SF is $6.4B for a population of 800K. Compare that to other cities like Oklahoma City (budget $788M, population 1.2M), Dallas, TX (budget $2.4B, population 1.2M), Phoenix, AZ budget $1.0B, population 1.6M), Austin, TX (budget $1.8M, population 743K), Jacksonville, FL (budget $972M, population 800K). Heck, even liberal Boston spends only $2.3B on a population of 600K.
Ugh...spending scarce bucks to tour Sodom just doesn’t appeal to normal folk.
Couldn’t possibly be all that.
Nor could it be the lewd behavior allowed in public...
Or sky high prices...
I could go on.
Visited SF once. It is a beautiful area, but the bums were aggressive and plentiful.
Now the state of California is just as aggressively going after people’s money as the street bums.
Add to that the completely outrageous taxes charged for everything to do with tourism. Also, maybe corporate America is not fond of bringing $$$ to Nazi Pelosi’s district.
And yes, the People’s Republic is full of bums, public urination and defacation and assorted gross creatures. And the area around the convention center (Moscone) is worse and worse.
Yaaay! The gays and libs will have to move closer to Los Angeles now. Keep them as far away from the Northern California Valley and Sierra Nevada Foothills as possible. Its the only Conservative refuge we have.
What's that, 8000 dollars per person? Rather more per household of course.
That is DEMENTED! Thanks for putting up the figures!
I do miss the shrimp sandwiches and the magicians on Pier 39 though. And there are a lot of nice used book stores along Embarcadero and in the Haight. Damn, its been a while since I’ve been roaming around there....
Maybe people are tired of seeing dancing homos in the street....
Who wants to pay to see fruits, nuts and flakes?
I don’t guess the fact that their local laws apparently allow men to fellate each other in public has anything to do with regular folks NOT wanting to “vacation” there?
But the best time I ever had in the City was seeing Warren Zevon and his band at Slims.
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