San Diego Stays Close to Home in Bid for Tourists : Travel: Attractions and hotels are focusing their appeals on neighboring counties and Arizona because the recession has forced vacationers to trim their plans.

There was a time when San Diego’s tourism industry took for granted that the county’s balmy weather and attractive beaches would draw waves of free-spending tourists every summer.

But the summer of ’91 finds industry leaders a bit nervous about a nationwide recession that has sent tremors through the travel and tourism industry across the nation. Figuring that vacationers will be reluctant to venture far from home, San Diego businesses have launched aggressive campaigns to persuade residents of other Southern California counties to take a ride south for fun and sun.

While San Diego also targets national and international markets, it remains heavily dependent upon vacationers from Arizona and California--who typically make up about 40% of the county’s total visitors. More than half of the 3.45 million visitors to Sea World of San Diego last year were Southern Californians on day trips or extended weekends. The vast majority arrived by automobile.

Park officials are trying to entice more such visitors this summer with a new, $5.2-million water ski show on Mission Bay. Billboards and radio and television spots in Los Angeles and Orange counties and Phoenix describe the show as the Southland’s only water ski extravaganza.

Attendance at the San Diego Zoo fell by 8% to 3 million during 1990, largely because the zoo failed to draw well in Los Angeles and Orange counties. The zoo, which recently changed advertising agencies, is attempting to “get more in front of the Los Angeles market and the Southwestern U.S. market,” according to a spokesman. Billboards, newspaper ads and radio and television spots promote the zoo in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

Most of the advertising focuses on the zoo’s ongoing 75th anniversary celebration and the new Gorilla Tropics exhibit.

And, in an unusual display of solidarity, the San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau and several hotels have devised a coordinated advertising strategy targeting Los Angeles and Orange counties.

The tourism agency is buying newspaper ads asking residents of other counties to consider vacationing in San Diego. Various hotels have agreed to buy individual ads on the same page of the publications. The idea, officials said, is to get more people thinking about San Diego as a destination--and letting the individual hotels compete for their business.

Five years ago, the summer advertising campaign for most local hotels consisted of a handful of strategically placed “image ads . . . (that ran) just to let people know that we were still here,” said Tom Vincent, president of the San Diego Hotel and Motel Assn.

That was before a building boom pushed the county’s room count to 45,000, up from just 20,000 in 1985. Occupancy rates that historically ranked among the nation’s highest tumbled to 62.7% during the first quarter of 1991, and average room rates continue to slip as operators scramble for guests.

Meanwhile, the county’s best-known tourist attractions are starting the new season on the heels of a flat 1990. Only the Wild Animal Park near Escondido reported a healthy increase in traffic.

Finding themselves in the same rocky boat, the hospitality industry and major attractions are banding together to offer “value” packages designed to lure “impulse” travelers--those people who live within an easy drive of San Diego, said Vincent, who is also general manager of the San Diego Princess hotel on Mission Bay.

Sea World now works with as many as 100 local hotels that offer packages including rooms, meals and admission tickets. “The emphasis is on the Los Angeles, Orange and Phoenix areas,” a Sea World spokeswoman said. “Most of the packages are three-day, two-night packages with the (Sea World) tickets included.”

San Diego attractions realize that they face stiff competition from theme parks in Los Angeles and Orange counties--which are also trying to get more from the regional market. The San Diego operators are seeking to give themselves an edge by stuffing more attractions into their parks, said Al Reese, vice president of the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Sea World’s new water ski show is patterned after successful extravaganzas in Florida and is its first major addition since 1987, when the aquatic park on Mission Bay added a massive amphitheater where Shamu, its signature whale, performs

“We knew we needed something for this season,” said C. Michael Cross, who was named as Sea World of California’s president in late May. “While we have other things in the pipeline, (the ski show) could be done quickly. It was our best shot, and it’s really an excellent show.”

The Wild Animal Park, which had a solid year in 1990, has nevertheless added “The Wild Woods: From Dinos to Rhinos,” an exhibit that features robotic dinosaurs and prehistoric mammals.

The exhibit--somewhat of a departure from the park’s usual fare--is designed to draw families with children into the park. It includes a variety of educational programs, including a “Dino Day Camp” for younger children. The park is advertising the dinosaur exhibit during Saturday morning cartoons on Los Angeles television channels.

While the parks are nervously eyeing the upcoming season, they also are making preliminary plans to counter the massive new attraction that Walt Disney Co. is planning to build in Anaheim or Long Beach.

“One of my highest priorities is to develop a master plan that says what we want to be in the year 2000 and how we get there,” Cross said. “We’ve literally got a priceless piece of land here, and we have to figure out what we want to do.”

There are signs throughout Sea World, now owned by St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch Entertainment Corp., that the park is rebounding from the financial neglect suffered under its prior owner in the 1980s. Financially troubled Harcourt Brace Jovanovich trimmed capital and maintenance budgets at its aquatic parks in California, Florida, Texas and Ohio.

The debt-laden company spent just $2.3 million in capital and maintenance during its last year in control of Sea World. Anheuser-Busch, which purchased HBJ’s parks division for $1.1 billion in 1989, pumped $14.5 million into capital and maintenance projects at Sea World during 1990 and will pour in another $13 million during 1991, Cross said.

Based upon first-quarter attendance figures, San Diego’s major attractions are on target to at least match 1990 levels. But tourism officials, aware that the true test won’t occur until the school year ends, remain cautious.

“I don’t think this is going to be a very good year anywhere for tourism,” said Jan Schultz, a San Diego-based tourism industry consultant. “But certainly, the strategy in times of an energy crisis or an economic recession is to tighten the belts and jab a little bit harder at the (regional) market.”