TOURISM
Expanded offerings, affordability may draw visitors despite recession
Tourism officials think the Buffalo Niagara region is poised to buck the national trend during the current economic slowdown.
“There are some things we believe we have in Buffalo and Western New York that we hope can mitigate some of the economic challenges out there,” said Richard Geiger, president and CEO of the Buffalo Niagara Convention & Visitors Bureau.
One of the biggest advantages local officials and hotel managers tout is the affordability of travel to the region.
“We are still perceived as a value when you compare us to New York and Chicago and even secondary cities like Pittsburgh from a price perspective,” said Michael Marsch, general manager of the Hyatt Regency Buffalo.
“Traditionally what we’ve seen in recessions in the past is that [driving] destinations like ours aren’t as affected as dramatically as those who rely on air travel,” said Ed Healy, director of communications for the CVB.
And it helps that the region is coming off another year of solid growth.
Through October 2008, hotel occupancy rates were up from 2007 for both Buffalo (3.7 percent) and Niagara Falls (11.7 percent), according to Smith Travel Research. Additionally, Smith listed Buffalo as one of the 2008 top 10 markets based on revenue-per-available room and occupancy growth.
“2008 was another good year for the local hospitality industry and we continue to benefit,” Geiger said. “We’ll see a $7.8 million [in bed tax revenues for 2008] which would be a record, and our convention sales staff will have booked about 130,000 beds for future years this year, which will also be a record. So there are some positive things out there.”
While Smith Travel Research projects a 3.5 percent drop in national occupancy for 2009, Geiger doesn’t think the Buffalo Niagara region will see numbers fall as much.
“We are going to enter 2009 with over 20,000 more room nights on the books than we did a year ago, so we are going into what we are projecting to be a slower year at least with more business on the books to start,” Geiger said.
Diana Dibble, public affairs manager for AAA Western and Central New York, predicts that business could rebound later in 2009, even if gasoline prices rise.
“People don’t want to give up traveling and vacation time with their families — they will just do it in different ways,” she said. “We are not denying the fact that it will be a slow start in 2009, but we’ll see more activity through the second half of the year.”
In addition to record sales in 2008, the region saw the opening of new cultural attractions such as the Burchfield Penney Art Center, and the restoration of old ones like Frank Lloyd Wright’s Darwin Martin House complex.
Along with the crowds came a fortuitous bump on the region’s resume: The New York Times in November published a long, laudatory piece on the architectural offerings of Buffalo, featuring the Martin House’s restoration. Then it named Buffalo one of the “44 Places to Go in 2009” in its Jan. 11 travel section.
“That [November] article brought the Martin House to the attention of a wider audience then we could have imagined,” said Mary Roberts, the Martin House Restoration Corporation’s executive director. “That’s a piece of publicity that’s worth about $1.5 million if you had to buy it as advertisement. We think the publicity from that will definitely generate increased visitation . . . in upcoming years.”
More than anything, the article is an affirmation of the area’s much-improved image, said CVB’s Healy said.
“There was a piece in the Washington Post in 2003 where the headline was something like, ‘Buffalo — yes Buffalo,’ and it was actually a positive piece, but there was some skepticism built into the headline,” Healy said. “There was none of that skepticism or apology for having to cover Buffalo in the Times piece. We feel like we are making strides and repositioning Buffalo and branding it as a great place.”
Now, along with the staples that bring in tourism dollars to the Buffalo Niagara region such as Niagara Falls, conventions and amateur sporting events, there are other attractions that can keep guests in town for another day or so.
“We participated in a travel expo this summer with the Albright-Knox Art Gallery,” said Kathleen Heyworth, head of marketing and public relations for Burchfield Penney, “and we were promoting for tour operators a real museum district/Elmwood Village for tour groups.”
The Buffalo Niagara region continues to attract large groups for various activities.
Last fall, for instance, Buffalo won a bid for the 2011 World Junior Hockey Championships. Last spring, the city won the 2011 convention of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which will bring thousands of people to town who are interested in the kinds of old buildings that are standing here.
There is also an effort to provide more green options to visitors.
“Next year there is a real push to do even more and have more standards in place because every group we bid on is asking us what our green practices are,” said Buffalo Niagara Convention Center facilities director Paul Murphy.
“And it’s small things and big things,” he said. “People like the fact that we use water coolers as opposed to people drinking individual water bottles. People want to know about tables that don’t require linen to save on washing, while years ago, people were concerned about things like having enough name tags.”
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