Posted on 09/10/2023 3:36:29 AM PDT by Libloather
San Francisco has hired a tourism official to encourage travelers to visit the 'the city by the bay' as it battles rampant crime, homeless and drugs crisis.
Josh Beck will be the new president and CEO of The San Francisco Travel Association, and the person that the city's tourism bureau and marketing organization is looking at in hopes of bringing SanFran back to the bustling vacation hub it once was.
Beck, who is currently head of Destination Toronto, will begin his new post on October 30, replacing former head Joe D'Alessandro, who headed the travel organization for nearly two decades and who is set to retire in December.
The city has been hit hard over the last few years by a homeless crisis, rampant drug use and public safety concerns. In August, the city reported nearly 1,670 car break-ins, contributing to the nearly 10,000 thefts from vehicles recorded in the city this year.
During the Labor Day holiday, multiple groups of tourists fell victim to car break-ins that that saw all their personal belongings and passports stolen, which occurred in broad daylight and within minutes of each other at a San Francisco Beach.
Despite these, Beck claims the biggest challenge is the 'ongoing narrative about San Francisco as a monolithic experience, when it's clearly not,' the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Beck claimed the media reports about whether San Francisco is safe is 'not 100 percent accurate,' as per the news outlet.
The city has a massive tourism and hospitality industry that supports more than 53,000 jobs.
While some vacationers have been returning, the flow of tourism has been nothing close to what they city of Frisco saw in 2019 at its peak, and experts claim will take a few years to get back to that level.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
99.9%?
This is the best offer Josh got? What a loser.
New motto: “San Francisco. If you don’t visit us, you’re a racist!”
To some extent, he’s right. I’m in S.F. and crime, drugs, street people are a terrible problem. However, due to the demographics of its residents, S.F. is certainly safer than many if not most other large U.S. cities. You’re far less likely to be the victim of violent crime in S.F. than in many other U.S. cities such as St Louis, Oakland, Detroit, Chicago, Philly, Atlanta, Memphis, Atlanta, New Orleans and numerous others.
On threat levels...yeah, on a 1-to-10 scale...I’d probably only assign a ‘3’ to SF against Memphis (’8’) or Baltimore (’9’).
My question...for the past decline, this SF decline gone on without any hinderances. The trend should continue for the next decade as well. If hotels/shopping don’t return to the downtown area, the city will go begging to the state for revenue sharing. Can the city survive in this decline?
If you asked me about tourism potential...it’s like Portland and Seattle...why would I go? Even for NYC, I’d have to continually be worried about robbery or stepping to some crap, or having some drug-binge guy in front of me.
The big lie works on the useful idiot. Keep telling the useful idiot that sf is safe and that idiot will vacation there. Then, when the idiot is robbed and beaten, the idiot will rationalize it as a “one off” because they have been brain washed that the city is safe.
And then the useful idiot votes for democrats...again. And the cycle continues.
I give him about 10 months before reality forces his eyes open, before the “fragrance” of soiled sidewalks forces him to hold his nose.
His predecessor had the last name of D’Alessandro.
Isn’t that Nancy Pelosi’s maiden name?
Wonder if it was a family member who finally got tired of lying for a career.
You have a miniscule 85% chance of being shat upon.
“why would I go?”
Despite everything that’s gone wrong in S.F. (and, believe me, I’ve never seen things as bad as they are now, particularly in the downtown-Market Street corridor), I do understand why some tourists still come. There’s the bay, Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, the cable cars, the hills, the crooked section of Lombard Street, Golden Gate Park, the ocean, the museums... It’s like a big Disneyland... if perhaps 1/3 of Disneyland reeked of weed and homeless people.
I think you might have hit on a vacation gimmick that would lure people to the home of the original sidewalk steamer...”Crime Tours”! If one city can have tours of what it’s like to be indigent another could have tours to experience robbery and assault for those who are curious. it could work.
He’s right about the “narrative part”, sure. The undeniable truth is though, San Francisco has a very serious crime problem due to mismanagement. They can try to handwave it away, but at some point self-preservation kicks in, even with a looney tunes leftist. He’s trying to manage perceptions.
Because even the mere perception that an area is unsafe is more than enough to kill a business district. Permanently. It starts a negative feedback loop of sorts. Revenue declines. Businesses close. Policing goes away, and “nobody goes there”, and not because it’s too crowded. Nobody will relocate there or start a new business. Old school ward Democrats understood this, and they knew better than to allow thousands of bums to camp out in their tony districts and shit on the sidewalks.
One of the South American presidents recently remarked that they must be doing all this on purpose, because nothing else fits.
Frisco need a good makeover, like a massive earthquake followed by a massive firestorm that turns it into a massive ash pile.
Do they hands out free Poop Maps at the airport for travelers?
That’s right; the market will determine its fate, and it doesn’t look promising. No propaganda will deceive businesses to risk moving there, and few newbies will risk 30 years of mortgage payments to move there.
NJ and NY are facing the same problem, though really because of high costs, entrenched (and expensive) gubmint workers, and a brain drain of young workers due to the horrible business climate. AS a result, they are Ground Zero for the Great Replacement; the trafficked Thirdworlders are the only ones who would see this as an improvement. NY has gone so far as proposing removing licensing and/or degree requirements for various jobs as they pose “barriers nto entry”; the real problem is they know nobody will invest the time/money in the training then stay in the dead zone (they leave). “Free tuition” at state schools is another example in NY; the tuition is “free” contingent on the student remaining in NY for the same number of years after graduation (basically indentured servitude, similar to early colonists earning their passage with 7 years “free labor”).
Whatever became of the proposed “walking tours” of the Tenderloin? I’m still laughing about that one! Almost as funny as the idea from a couple of decades ago when the Democrat/Communists came up with derived from an old racist joke to reduce the number of crimes committed by young black men: Midnight Basketball (you know, “throw ‘em a basketball”).
SF needs a Batman, Green Hornet, and Justice League.
Yeah, come to San Francisco and don’t believe your lying eyes. That should work.
Dear Josh, 110% is not possible in your statement. And secondly, D’alesandro sounds so familiar.
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