Californians Trip Up Dismal Travel Forecast

Encouraged by a state tourism campaign to “find yourself here” rather than risk flying the less-friendly skies, Californians are doing just that.

Surging in-state travel by Californians, in fact, has more than offset the plunge in nonresident visitors since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, state and industry officials said Tuesday.

Overall travel this summer in California is now expected to be 7% higher than the summer of 2001, far more upbeat than the 9% decline forecast in January.

California tourism is expected to show steady improvement the rest of the year, according to the latest seasonal forecast by D.K. Shifflet & Associates, a travel research firm.

“That’s encouraging news to us,” said Fred Sater, spokesman for California Tourism, the state tourism agency. “We are on the road to recovery in tourism.”

California was the nation’s most visited state last year with an 11.6% share of the domestic travel market, compared with 6.8% for Texas, 5.8% for Florida and 4.4% for New York, state officials said.

Tourism industry officials credited a $12-million advertising campaign by California Tourism with encouraging Californians to take their vacations closer to home after the attacks.

About 1 million Californians owe their jobs to tourism, an industry that accounts for about 6% of the state economy.

And for the time being at least, in-state travel by Californians is filling the void left by the decrease in visits from foreign and out-of-state tourists, state and industry officials said.

The preliminary results of a state-commissioned study, conducted by D.K. Shifflet & Associates and released Tuesday, suggest that the increase in in-state leisure travel by Californians is linked to California Tourism’s advertising campaign.

From December through early March, the agency ran print, television and radio advertisements featuring celebrities such as Clint Eastwood and Jack Nicholson. The campaign--with the slogans “California, Find Yourself Here” and “We’re Californians”--marked the first time that California Tourism had tailored its sales pitch to state residents.

In November, before the campaign, resident travel in California was down 8% and nonresident travel was down 11% compared with November 2000, the study found.

But from December through February, while the ads were running, about 65 million Californians made in-state trips of 50 miles or more away from their homes, compared with about 60 million during the same period a year earlier.

During the same period, there were 8.2 million visits by nonresidents, a decline from 10.1 million from December 2000 to February 2001, the study found.

The trends have been noted at some of the state’s most popular tourist attractions.

At Yosemite National Park, there are noticeably fewer foreign visitors, said park ranger Deb Schweizer.

“Walking through Yosemite Village, the majority of people seem to be Californians,” Schweizer said.

The total number of park visitors was 529,000 in July, down from 552,000 in the same month last year, Schweizer said.

The bad news for hotel and restaurant owners may be good news for some Californians.

“There are less tour buses in the park,” Schweizer said. “It is a little bit easier to get reservations in the park this year.”