Staying focused locally

Christine Carrillo

Although businesses in the Newport-Mesa area felt a strong and

immediate effect following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, local

spending has managed to keep them afloat.

While Newport-Mesa offers renowned shopping and safe beaches, it

has never functioned as an international destination for tourists. So

as the conference and visitor’s bureaus in both Costa Mesa and

Newport Beach teamed up with other bureaus in Orange County to map

out a campaign to heal their economical wounds nearly a year ago,

they found their best chances for reprieve were in the local market.

“People weren’t traveling,” said Diane Pritchett, executive

director of the Costa Mesa bureau. “So we refocused our advertising

campaign to the driving market.”

With their attention on the three-hour radius surrounding the two

cities, the bureaus hoped they could encourage corporate travelers to

return to their city to conduct business as usual and leisure

travelers to take short weekend trips close to home.

“Everybody had to react to a very different environment,” said

Bridget Lindquist, deputy director of the Newport Beach bureau. “It

was a time when the industry pulled together.”

And by pulling together, the bureaus managed to attract more

business from the surrounding Los Angeles and San Diego counties, as

well as business from neighboring states -- primarily Arizona and

Nevada.

“We have a lot of the key elements that people are looking for,”

Lindquist said. “We’re perceived as a safe, relaxing kind of

atmosphere and that’s what they’re coming for.”

It’s also what led many local residents to keep most of their

business transactions and leisure trips in the area.

“The bulk of our business is done within a core market of a

hundred-mile radius for us, so that’s obviously not impacted by

international tourists,” said Debra Gunn Downing, executive director

of marketing at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. “We have experienced

a decline in international tourism since 9/11, particularly with the

Japanese tourists, which fell off pretty dramatically after 9/11, but

we are starting to see some of that coming back.”

Many of the struggles that both cities faced in the latter part of

2001 have begun to make an overall turn-around.

“We’re very encouraged about our outlook,” said Marta Hayden,

executive director of the Newport Beach bureau. “We’re ahead of our

pace for the future market.”

The hotel industry doesn’t exactly fall under that category. In

general, while most of the hotels in Newport-Mesa have bounced back

dramatically, they have carried with them the wounds of the delayed

recuperation within the international travel market.

“Right after Sept. 11, people canceled all of their meetings,”

said Bill Allison, director of sales and marketing at the Westin

Hotel in Costa Mesa. “Corporations are having fewer meetings because

they’re facing decreased revenue ... It’s an expense they sometimes

can’t see the immediate return on.”

While the Westin Hotel, the Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Beach

and many others in the Newport-Mesa area rely greatly on corporate

conferences and international business travel, the underlying reasons

for their problems pertain to more than just the events of Sept. 11.

The economic struggles of those businesses, reliant upon tourism

and travel, is also dependent upon the current instability of the

economy.

“I think the economy was softening before 9/11 and I think 9/11

secured its fate,” said Carrie Olson, director of marketing at the

Four Seasons Hotel. “I really don’t think you can separate the two

... I think they go hand in hand.”

Aside from the lingering struggles involving international travel,

the fate of Newport-Mesa’s tourist-related businesses seems

promising.

“I don’t think anybody escaped the aftermath of 9/11,” Olson said.

“It’s not the heyday of 2000 ... I don’t think we’ve come back to

that extent, but it’s definitely on the upswing.”