HomeDiagramsDatabaseMapsForum About
     

Go Back   SkyscraperPage Forum > Discussion Forums > City Discussions


Reply

 
Thread Tools Display Modes
     
     
  #1  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2015, 6:16 AM
hauntedheadnc's Avatar
hauntedheadnc hauntedheadnc is online now
A gruff individual.
 
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Greenville, SC - "Birthplace of the light switch rave"
Posts: 13,337
Tourism and You!

[Scratchy 1950's film strip music]

Tourism is the process by which visitors from outside your city discover your city and all it has to offer. These visitors can come for many reasons...

...Perhaps your city, like Los Angeles or Miami, has cultivated a glamorous image that is known throughout the world.

...Perhaps your city, like New York, is a world-famous destination for culture, and offers many fine museums and theaters.

...Or perhaps your town or region is a place where people from the big city get away to relax. Maine is such a place, attracting visitors from all over urban New England. Galena, Illinois is another such place, attracting Chicagoans.

In the end, it's all the same. People come from outside to spend time and money in your city or region. Be sure to show them a warm welcome!

[/scratchy 1950's film strip music]

Yes, tourism... where would we be without it? Tourist season is over in my city for the moment, with January being one of three quiet months before things start to ramp up again in the spring. By July it reaches fever pitch, rides high until school starts again and things dip a bit, then spikes in October with the changing of the leaves, then it's a gradual decline until Biltmore House takes down its Christmas decorations and all is quiet again.

My city is a regional, and increasingly a national, tourist destination that lands on most every Top Ten list out there. People come for the food, for the art, for the natural beauty, for the architecture, and to visit Biltmore Estate. We attract roughly three million visitors who stay at least one night in a hotel, and tourists in Asheville spend more than $901 million in the city every year. We attract our visitors from the urban South, including Atlanta, Charlotte, the Triangle and the Triad, plus the urban centers of South Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, and Virginia and the DC metro area.

Without tourists, Asheville would drop dead. We've seen most of our heavy industry depart even though there is still a manufacturing presence here. Breweries are an increasingly large part of the economy here, but they'll never replace textile mills like Beacon and American Enka, which each employed thousands at their peak, not to mention the Gerber baby food plant and the Ball glass factory.

We have a love/hate relationship with our tourists. We know that we depend on their money, but we also know that as residents the tourists view us as dancing monkeys strategically placed for their amusement. To live in an historic area like Montford is to expect to have, at least once a day, some rich twat from Atlanta march up and ring the doorbell, and demand to know what's the asking price of your house. People in the tourism industry, at Biltmore and at hotels and the like, compile lists of the stupidest things people ask and do, because there is apparently something about the process of becoming a tourist that causes your IQ to plunge by three-quarters. For instance, the hospital where my partner is employed runs a betting pool on when the first tourist will fall off a waterfall (usually it's sometime in May), whereas at the hotel where I work, I've had a guest fly into a frothing rage because the cups in their bathroom were not stacked neatly enough. The end result of all this (and so very much more) is that we hate you but love your money. To deal with tourists in Asheville is to float your smiling rubber ducky atop a deep, still, cold well of resentment.

Recently in traveling around the Caribbean and visiting the national art museum in the Bahamas, I learned that other places dependent upon tourism tend to feel the same way. The exhibits at the museum there depicted a place that knows it is being exploited by outsiders, but has no power to survive without them, much like Asheville, and much like most any other area that is mainly dependent upon tourism. The Cherokee Indian Reservation, plus every other Native American community that has ever had to prostitute its culture for tourists know how this feels. I imagine people in Las Vegas and Orlando hate their visitors every bit as much as they love their money. Places like this, like Asheville, and Vegas, and Orlando, tend to have well-defined apparatus for separating visitors from their money, and go on endlessly about their hospitality -- but with the understanding that the welcome runs out when the cash does. Tourist towns are inherently vicious by their very nature.

What I'm curious about, is what relationship does your city have with tourists? How much, if at all, do you depend on visitors to bolster your economy? How do you feel about those visitors?
__________________
"To sustain the life of a large, modern city in this cloying, clinging heat is an amazing achievement. It is no wonder that the white men and women in Greenville walk with a slow, dragging pride, as if they had taken up a challenge and intended to defy it without end." -- Rebecca West for The New Yorker, 1947

Last edited by hauntedheadnc; Jan 3, 2015 at 7:30 AM.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #2  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2015, 6:49 AM
mhays mhays is offline
Never Dell
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Posts: 19,748
I love tourists. A duck boat goes by my condo every three or four minutes all summer, and I used to live next to the Pike Place Market, where for multiple city blocks the main hallways feel like concourses in an old stadium where the game just ended. Yes they get in the way sometimes. But it's flattering that they're here, and we certainly rely on them.

Residents pay for museum and theater endowments, but visitors buy a lot of the tickets, especially during the work days. Locals eat at restaurants at lunch and dinner, but tourists keep them going at odd times. They flood districts with people that might otherwise be kind of quiet. Downtown stores sometimes sell more to tourists than locals. Even Nordstrom once said its HQ store was half tourists.

Part of the last paragraph is a theme...while office workers create rush hours, tourists don't. They're dispersed throughout the day.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #3  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2015, 7:06 AM
cabasse's Avatar
cabasse cabasse is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: atalanta
Posts: 4,163
[previously here - late night whining]

we've recently finished/are building the type of destinations that will help the city become a more appealing place to tourists. (ponce and krog st markets, the new buckhead shopping district, the civil rights museum, the downtown streetcar etc)

i think the general consensus here is that it's a great place to live but not so great to visit. atlanta is a big enough city that what tourists we do get tend to blend in with everyone else.
__________________

Last edited by cabasse; Jan 3, 2015 at 7:02 PM.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #4  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2015, 7:10 AM
mhays mhays is offline
Never Dell
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Posts: 19,748
I imagine they know it's visited. Atlanta has tons of conventions and it's a major business center, with some important HQs and a huge regional-office sector. What's missing from its image is the vacation aspect, at least for people outside the region.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #5  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2015, 7:26 AM
cabasse's Avatar
cabasse cabasse is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: atalanta
Posts: 4,163
__________________

Last edited by cabasse; Jan 3, 2015 at 7:03 PM.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #6  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2015, 7:33 AM
hauntedheadnc's Avatar
hauntedheadnc hauntedheadnc is online now
A gruff individual.
 
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Greenville, SC - "Birthplace of the light switch rave"
Posts: 13,337
Quote:
Originally Posted by cabasse View Post
i truly appreciate your hyperbole. i have to remind myself to turn down the color/contrast just a little when i read your posts. next time i'm in town for moogfest, i'll make sure to visit montford, which is truly one of a kind in these parts, no other city has anything like it at all. i'll pretend to be rich and knock on some doors and ask people to sell their house to me, you know, for a good time.

/bone
My initial reaction was to remind you that hyperbole is a literary device that helps writing avoid becoming stale and dry, and to suggest that if you preferred something black-and-white and by the numbers, you might enjoy reading the tax code or the phone book. Then I realized you thought I was kidding about people in Montford being harassed to sell their homes, which I assure you I am not.

Although, take heart. Sometimes the rich twat is from Charlotte or Raleigh, and a few people I know have even opened their doors to find Washingtonians and New Yorkers wanting to buy. The one time I witnessed it personally, though, it was someone from California.
__________________
"To sustain the life of a large, modern city in this cloying, clinging heat is an amazing achievement. It is no wonder that the white men and women in Greenville walk with a slow, dragging pride, as if they had taken up a challenge and intended to defy it without end." -- Rebecca West for The New Yorker, 1947
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #7  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2015, 7:34 AM
mrnyc mrnyc is offline
cle/west village/shaolin
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 11,589
i only mind the tourists when they stop dead in their tracks on the sidewalk instead of stepping off.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #8  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2015, 10:22 AM
animatedmartian's Avatar
animatedmartian animatedmartian is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Nov 2010
Posts: 2,945
Honestly, I feel like Detroit gets very little tourism (at least from outside of SE Michigan), for obvious reasons, and actually is very little dependent on it. But then I'm often surprised to find tourists do come here and even more that aren't just looking for abandoned buildings to take pictures of. Then I'm even completely to surprised when people enjoy visiting and even plan a second or third trip.

The common sentiment seems to be that Detroit is never what anyone expects, whether they expected a complete ghost town or the downtown area to resemble Manhattan in vibrancy. People are also often surprised to drive out of downtown, into the suburbs, and into rush hour traffic (expecting whole counties of decay, I guess). But everyone usually agrees the suburbs are pretty nice. People also usually say Detroiters are super nice, but I'm not sure if that's just a Midwestern thing or specific to the city/metro. Either way, I'm glad to see people actually enjoy visiting the city, and more power to them if they realize its a continuing work in progress.

Don't want it too touristy though. Personally, I feel like it gets to a point where touristy locations can feel removed from the rest of a city and doesn't really give people an authentic experience. Eventually, every thing feels like a souvenir store and it's like advertisers are just trying to push products in your face.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #9  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2015, 12:26 PM
Larry King Larry King is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Apr 2011
Location: Philadelphia
Posts: 976
I'm from philly.. the more tourists we get the better.

I've noticed we are getting more european tourists every year.. the historical sights are our big attraction and i think we should be marketing more the the constitution obsessed american heartland

Also i think more people should be coming here for the food and lifestyle. Philly should be marketed as a "european" experience in america.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #10  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2015, 4:58 PM
10023's Avatar
10023 10023 is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: London
Posts: 21,146
London gets a few tourists. It's better when they stick to their designated areas, but they really fuck up my commute around Christmas.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #11  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2015, 6:30 PM
StethJeff's Avatar
StethJeff StethJeff is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 2,068
I'd say that LA has a pretty good relationship with its tourists. For the most part they get absorbed into designated holding pens away from locals (Disneyland, Universal, Getty), go to areas that frankly can use all the help they can get (Hollywood Blvd, DTLA more recently), or get dispersed fairly evenly across the beaches. It's such a big metro with sites spread all over the place that they don't really ever interrupt day to day life here. In fact I go out of my way to help with directions or take pictures of families whenever I get the chance. I guess I'm just glad that people are able to appreciate what I otherwise consider a fairly shitty tourist destination.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #12  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2015, 7:18 PM
hipster duck's Avatar
hipster duck hipster duck is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: Toronto
Posts: 4,109
Vancouver gets its fair share of tourists. There are basically two kinds. The first are relatives of immigrants, usually from the Chinese-speaking countries, India and miscellaneous Eastern Europe. They do the basic tourist circuit: Stanley Park, the Aquarium, Granville Island.

There are also the nature and backpacking types who come in the summer and the skiing/snowboarding types that come in the winter, usually bound for Whistler. The former are mostly Europeans (Germans, in particular). The latter are from all over, but young Australians seem to come in droves.

Very few foreign visitors come to Vancouver primarily to see the urban qualities of the city.

Speaking for myself, it's pretty easy for locals to avoid contact with tourists, even during the summer. They stick to parts of town that I hardly venture to. Most of the Vancouver that I enjoy is off the downtown peninsula, and they don't come here.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #13  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2015, 8:22 PM
chris08876's Avatar
chris08876 chris08876 is offline
NYC/NJ/Miami-Dade
 
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Riverview Estates Fairway (PA)
Posts: 45,696
City I'm in most, NYC, has way to many tourists. Something like 50 million plus for 2013. Christmas as always was really busy. I kinda enjoy the crowds and the chaos that it causes. Well, from a pedestrian standpoint. Driving is a different story.

Like any big city in that league, tourism is a big industry.

Quote:
New York City Will Reach a Record 54.3 Million Visitors in 2013

Visitors Will Generate Nearly $59 Billion in Overall Economic Impact This Year Alone
=====================
http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-ma...tors-2013-/#/0

Last edited by chris08876; Jan 3, 2015 at 8:37 PM.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #14  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2015, 9:39 PM
mhays mhays is offline
Never Dell
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Posts: 19,748
Tourism varies a lot more than visitor numbers or spending would suggest. A lot of metros and downtowns get a lot of business travel without being major tourist draws.

Likewise, you can do well with tourism from your own region but not be on the map across the country or ocean.

Seattle isn't on the first tier by any stretch. We do ok on the business visitor side but that's more about individuals since our convention center is too small. Like most places, our largest visitor counts are from our own region, like Portland, Vancouver, and Spokane. But we've gotten a boost from cruise ships in recent years, as that pie has grown and we've gone from Vancouver having nearly everything to more of an even divide. That brings people who wouldn't come otherwise. Also, we've been adding more Asian flights, and China especially has burst onto the scene as a major tourist source.

I used to not think of Seattle as a big tourist destination, but it seems to be rising in the second tier. Downtown room nights have nearly doubled in 20 years. Neighborhoods like the Pike Place Market, the central Waterfront, the hotel core around the convention center and main retail district, and Seattle Center (Space Needle, museums, etc.) are all at least half about tourists now. I doubt many people fly from overseas just to see our urban charms, but we've cobbled together a lot of good niches.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #15  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2015, 11:04 PM
SignalHillHiker's Avatar
SignalHillHiker SignalHillHiker is offline
I ♣ Baby Seals
 
Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: Sin Jaaawnz, Newf'nland
Posts: 34,658
Tourism is worth $1 billion/year in Newfoundland and Labrador, with the overwhelmingly majority of the industry centered in St. John's (208,000 Metro - so $1 billion is a lot for us) and, to a far lesser extent, the Gros Morne National Park region of the west coast.

Tourist season runs from early summer (during which most are Canadians and Americans who drive here) to late fall (during which most are Europeans who arrive via cruise ships). The main attractions here are the landscapes (including exposed portions of the earth's mantle, incredibly significant fossil beds from critical periods in the evolution of life, etc.), the historic communities (including the only authenticated Viking village in North America, or so they say), icebergs (in late spring), whales, and nightlife (George Street and environs is nothing but pubs, clubs, and dance halls).

When I was growing up, most tourists tended to belong to either the Brady Bunch or Backpacker camps - comfortably middle class and either wide-eyed at anything they couldn't get at a Walmart or stoned. These days, it's more of a mixed crowd. We're even, for the first time, attracting a significant number of extremely wealthy and celebrity tourists. Facilities such as the Fogo Island Inn are contributing to this tremendously.

We're famously hospitable so people go out of their way to make tourists comfortable. Most people seem to really love having the tourists around. We used to be quite a busy, cosmopolitan city. The Portuguese would be here every summer for months on end with their white fleet. The Icelanders would fly over every fall to do their Christmas shopping. All of that has disappeared, for the most part, so tourists are really our only regular visitors from the rest of the world (which, here, is simply called "away". "Oh, you're from away, welcome!").

I wouldn't describe us as friendly, however, although that's the term most tourists use. There's simply no facade, what you see is what you get. People wear their hearts on their sleeves and are far more open and boisterous than tends to be the norm elsewhere in North America. Think of it as a Baltimore inhabited by people whose fathers were from Boston and mothers from Minneapolis but everyone is drunk.

We've won a shitload of awards, around the world, for our tourism videos. Their style and slogans have been subsequently mirrored by other Canadian provinces.

Video Link


So the industry is something local people are very aware of. The annual visitor numbers are always front page news. People generally stay in touch with tourists they happened to meet or help somehow.

Personally, I love it. I always strike up a conversation with obvious tourists. You meet awesome people that way.
__________________
Note to self: "The plural of anecdote is not evidence."
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #16  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2015, 11:51 PM
PoshSteve's Avatar
PoshSteve PoshSteve is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Cleveland OH!
Posts: 187
Cleveland sees alot of medical tourists, predominately from the Middle East and East Asia coming to the Cleveland Clinic for care. Not only are there alot of them, but they come with money too. From when I worked in Beachwood Place (the top mall of the region) it wasnt uncommon to see princes and princesses going around with their entourages just picking up and buying everything in sight.

These last few years, national tourism has started to pick up to, now that the word about how cool Cleveland is is finally starting to work its way into the national media. And this was before all the excitement after the return of Lebron and the RNC announcement. That has only added to it. Since the new convention center opened downtown, there has been a huge influx in visitors for business and pleasure. Tens of thousands came from around the country and around the world for the Seniors Games last year, and the Gay Games this year. The more we bring in with business and big events, the more go back home and spread the word about what Cleveland really is, and the more come back with their friends and families.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #17  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2015, 11:53 PM
novaCJ novaCJ is offline
Stuck in the Suburbs
 
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Northern Virginia (DC Suburbs)
Posts: 360
Tourists bring us money, that's about it. In the summer, the majority tend to be large (in size and number) families from the south and midwest who complain about everything, can't parallel park, can't figure out Metro to save their life (PLEASE for the love of god DON'T stand on the left side of the escalator, I can't tell you how many trains I have missed because of this), and refuse to venture outside of the area near the mall because they heard the city was dangerous from some relative who visited 20 years ago. And no, our food is not overpriced or that bad, you think that because you insist on eating at the McDonalds in the museum food court...
__________________
"The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The realist adjusts the sails."
-William A. Ward
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #18  
Old Posted Jan 4, 2015, 12:07 AM
fflint's Avatar
fflint fflint is offline
Triptastic Gen X Snoozer
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: San Francisco
Posts: 22,207
According to this website, San Francisco hosted 16.9 million visitors in 2013 who spent $9.38 billion, which worked out to 134,231 visitors spending $25.7 million in the city every day. I'm sure 2014 was even better. Tourism is San Francisco's other big industry.

People from everywhere come for all sorts of reasons, and not to seem like a homer, but San Francisco has a lot to offer those who show up, from wherever, for whatever reason.

Like most San Franciscans, I avoid Fisherman's Wharf like the plague and limit my exposure to North Beach, but I love the Union Square/Market Street shopping district and so that is where I come into the most contact with tourists. It's usually crowded down there, so I experience them more in the context of mobility issues than in terms of personal interactions. However, when I encounter tourists in my neighborhood I will absolutely offer directions if needed (this happened last week--German tourists headed to the hipster enclave along Valencia Street). I don't know why, but I like encountering tourists off the beaten track more than I do when I'm downtown.
__________________
"You need both a public and a private position." --Hillary Clinton, speaking behind closed doors to the National Multi-Family Housing Council, 2013
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #19  
Old Posted Jan 4, 2015, 3:57 AM
ColDayMan's Avatar
ColDayMan ColDayMan is offline
B!tchslapping Since 1998
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Columbus
Posts: 19,889
Columbus has lovely unique neighborhoods (German Village alone should be a tourist magnet) and loves conventions...but isn't a touristy city. Our biggest "tourist" attraction is the zoo. Shame, really. The city has horrible marketing. "Discover Columbus!" "Experience Columbus!" "Columbus, OHIO!!!" I mean, Christ, even Portland, OR dropped the OR and the Maine city is far more prominent than our version in Georgia.

Cincinnati is slightly better for tourists but likes to market outside the city except for, again, the zoo. You'd think they'd want to market areas like Over-the-Rhine (which with some more restaurants and tourist-friendly bars, can hang with the French Quarter) and Mt. Adams...but we don't. We market Kings Island. Outside the city. We don't even market the Freedom Center (one of the finest African-American-leaning museums on the continent). Again, bad marketing.

Dayton basically just says "we invented the airplane. Show up." Oh, and "don't pay" since all the museums are free! US Air Force Museum (wonderful place; not in city limits)...free. Again, bad marketing (and it has the best case of "image" in the southern Ohio triangle...the airplane). Bah. BAH IT ALL!!!

Whoever said it's a nice place to live but we don't really know how to handle visitors...you got it.
__________________
Click the x: _ _ X _ _!
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #20  
Old Posted Jan 4, 2015, 4:58 AM
fflint's Avatar
fflint fflint is offline
Triptastic Gen X Snoozer
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: San Francisco
Posts: 22,207
Quote:
Originally Posted by ColDayMan View Post
Columbus Our biggest "tourist" attraction is the zoo.
Bigger than the Ohio Capitol building?
__________________
"You need both a public and a private position." --Hillary Clinton, speaking behind closed doors to the National Multi-Family Housing Council, 2013
Reply With Quote
     
     
This discussion thread continues

Use the page links to the lower-right to go to the next page for additional posts
 
 
Reply

Go Back   SkyscraperPage Forum > Discussion Forums > City Discussions
Forum Jump


Thread Tools
Display Modes

Forum Jump


All times are GMT. The time now is 8:49 AM.

     
SkyscraperPage.com - Archive - Privacy Statement - Top

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.