Hospitality Program Encourages Tourists to Stay an Extra Day

It doesn’t take much to encourage tourism officials from Ventura and Oxnard to tout their coastal communities. Give them a second and they’ll give you a few tourist attractions.

This week being National Tourism Week, they’re making a special point of promoting the tourist trade. On Thursday, both visitor bureaus will mark the occasion with activities focusing on the economic importance and need for growth of the local tourism trade.

In Ventura, more than 60 front-line employees from the city’s hospitality industry--people such as desk clerks and restaurant workers--will be escorted around town to better acquaint them with the attractions Ventura has to offer. A restaurant and attraction trade show at City Hall will follow the tour.

The program, called “Stay An Extra Day,” is intended to encourage employees of hotels, restaurants and other visitor stops to promote Ventura. The thought is that the more sites visitors know about, the more likely they are to extend their stay or return to the city on future trips.

Tourism officials estimate that the average traveling couple adds $180 per day to Ventura’s economy.

“I think we need to recognize that front-line employees are essentially our salespeople,” said Kathy Janega-Dykes, executive director of the Ventura Visitors & Convention Bureau.

“While we are promoting Ventura through advertising, marketing and trade shows, we still need to continue that promotion through our front-line employees,” she said. “They are the ones physically talking one on one with our visitors. A lot of time they get turnover, and some may not have personally visited the museum or restaurants.”

Thursday’s tour is the second hospitality program this year for the city’s front-line employees. A customer-service seminar was held in March. Janega-Dykes said the programs are critical to the growth of Ventura’s tourism industry and thus the city’s overall economy.

“I think sometimes people overlook that tourism is a major employer in this town,” she said.

“There are 1,800 [tourism-related] jobs in this town, ranging from summertime employment to hourly positions for students to management positions,” she said. “Tourism also supports our local restaurants and retail stores. It helps sustain businesses that might otherwise have trouble.”

This week, the Greater Oxnard & Harbors Tourism Bureau will emphasize the economic impact of the industry at its luncheon at the Casa Sirena Hotel & Marina. Guest speaker Lon Hatamiya, head of the California Trade & Commerce Agency, will discuss ways that tourism and economic development can work together.

Carol Lavender, executive director of the bureau, needs no convincing.

“We do [familiarization] trips for business planners,” she said. “Without the meetings and conventions and conferences going on in Oxnard, with just weekend business, we could not keep the hotels alive. The meat and potatoes is the conference business during the week, and that part is economic development.”

Business people visiting Oxnard see what the area has to offer from a tourism perspective, Lavender said.

“They see Oxnard in another light,” she said. “When they come to Oxnard they drive around and see what is going on here. We are a very prosperous city, and they see that this might be a good place to start a business.”

So far in fiscal 1998, hotel bed tax revenue has increased 12% from fiscal 1997. Last fiscal year the city generated $1.7 million. Lavender credits the increase in tourism tax funds to increased advertising and the general state of the economy.

“People want places to go,” she said. “People in the 20-to-35 or -40 age groups have the discretionary funds to do fun things.”

Janega-Dykes and Lavender see Oxnard and Ventura working in tandem to attract visitors to all of Ventura County. A joint cable advertising plan is in the works.

“Gone are the days when you can expect a family of four to stay in one location for an entire weekend,” Lavender said.

“We market the Ventura Museum of History & Art and the Ventura Mission,” she said. “Our hotels send out brochures on themselves, but also on harbor events in Ventura and various attractions over there. We’ve got a wonderful cultural climate in Ventura County, and it would be foolish to think that [tourists] would only stay in one place.”