Sunny Forecast for Tourism in ’96

Local tourism promoters know it: There is no Disneyland in Ventura County.

But they also know that, despite the absence of a theme park, the area has plenty of sights to see, beaches to stroll, and hotels, shops and restaurants to patronize.

All of which, they say, makes Ventura County a hot spot for visitors--a point they will try to get across to anyone looking for vacation, weekend or day-trip destinations in 1996.

According to the California Department of Commerce, tourism brought $727 million to Ventura County in 1993. Statistics for 1994 will be completed next month, with 1995 figures still a long way off. But local tourism watchers are pleased with what they saw in 1995 and expect increased tourism in the new year.

“I’m really, really optimistic,” said Bill Clawson, executive director of the Ventura Visitors and Convention Bureau.

Part of Clawson’s optimism can be attributed to the recently released 1995 California edition of “Frommer’s Best Beach Vacations,” which ranked the Ventura-Oxnard area 14th on its list of best beach destinations in the state.

“It’s a list of the top 25 places to sun and stroll. We’re rated over Big Sur, Carmel, Pismo Beach, Santa Monica,” Clawson said. “It’s things like that that help our recognition, and we plan to promote it.”

Clawson rated 1995 as an average year for Ventura tourism, with hotel occupancy at about 61%, up from 60.1% in 1993, but down from 67% in 1994. The 1994 figures were higher countywide because the Northridge earthquake sent San Fernando Valley residents looking outside their area for temporary shelter.

Like 1994, 1995 began with a natural disaster that affected visitor totals, but this time negatively.

“At the beginning of 1995, we had the floods that washed all the debris out of the rivers and then threw it back on the beach,” said John Walters, general manager of Ventura’s Doubletree Hotel and president of the city’s Chamber of Commerce.

“We felt it had some negative effect on tourism even into the summer,” said Walters, who is also a member of the board of directors of Ventura’s tourism bureau. “But we’ve since experienced an upward trend in hotel business.”

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Plans to promote Ventura in 1996 call for continued marketing to people and groups looking for short-term jaunts, Walters said.

“The trend in the travel industry is away from two-week vacations and more toward weekend getaways,” he said. “A lot of our business is from Los Angeles [and] Bakersfield, people who can drive a couple of hours, stay three days and two nights, and go home.”

Walters said the tourism bureau also concentrates on overseas tour groups. “We have had a lot of success bringing in bus groups that used to stop in Santa Barbara,” he said. “They are interested in a lot of things here, like the Channel Islands.”

In the months ahead, Ventura’s tourism bureau will step up its promotion during several large-scale events. Among them will be Powerboat magazine’s Ventura Offshore Grand Prix, a first-year national boat race expected to attract more than 30,000 out-of-town visitors to the Ventura Harbor during the last weekend in September.

Clawson said there will also be intensive marketing of the revitalized downtown area and the opening of the pier restaurant, scheduled for the spring.

Carol Lavender, executive director of the Greater Oxnard & Harbors Tourism Bureau, is also touting her city as a beach-side getaway.

“We’re suddenly being discovered,” Lavender said. “Most people don’t know what there is to do in Oxnard.”

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Lavender said Oxnard’s hotel occupancy rates were 60.1% during fiscal 1994-95. She estimated the figure was about the same as the prior year, although no statistics are available before May 1994. Though the occupancy rates may have been flat, she said, Oxnard did see a 10% increase in the use of hotel conference rooms by out-of-town groups.

“That indicates that people from the Los Angeles and Orange County areas are starting to plan meetings here,” she said. “That looks good, and it looks stronger for 1996. Meetings of medical businesses have increased by far, which stands to reason with all the medical business in Carpinteria, Thousand Oaks and other places nearby.”

Lavender anticipates an across-the-board increase in visitors to Oxnard in 1996, thanks to a 7 1/2-minute video promoting the city, due to be completed by the end of January.

“It will depict the area as a safe place to go to the beach, a safe place to go shopping,” Lavender said. “It will go to meeting planners and tour operators. Motor coaches have televisions, and we would like to put our destination videos in them so people can see them when traveling.”

Oxnard’s tourism bureau also plans to build on past successes, such as the annual two-day strawberry festival, which attracts 70,000 to 80,000 people each day. Lavender said she is working on setting up travel packages with Amtrak to bring visitors to Oxnard for the festival May 18 and 19.

In Camarillo, where the main attraction has been the Camarillo Factory Stores center since it opened last February, the tourism picture is more retail-oriented than in Ventura and Oxnard.

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“Toward the end of 1995, we saw an influx of visitors because of the factory outlet center,” said Carol Nordahl, executive director of the city’s Chamber of Commerce. “Because of the Barney’s New York and Saks Fifth Avenue stores coming in late in the year, a lot more people were coming up from Los Angeles and even Orange County to shop here.”

Terri Cameron, manager of the Camarillo Factory Stores, estimated that about 100,000 people--a mix of locals and visitors--shop at the center each month. For the three-day period that followed Thanksgiving, she said, 12,000 to 15,000 shoppers visited the center each day.

When it opened, the 150,000-square-foot center contained 46 stores. Its 80,000-square-foot, 18-store second phase is under construction. And in March, a 170,000-square-foot third section is expected to break ground.

With the expansion, Nordahl expects the number of out-of-town shoppers to increase significantly.

“We now have a more defined group of people who we can cater to and really target, and that would be the shoppers,” she said. “Before the factory stores opened it was more, ‘Come check out Camarillo, the hiking, the trails. We are close to the ocean--it’s a quiet, relaxing community,’ things of that nature. Now we have found our unique niche. In Anaheim, people go to visit Disneyland. We have the factory stores.”

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A key to promoting the city as a whole, she said, will be to make sure shoppers know what Camarillo has to offer besides the factory outlets.

“We are encouraging them to explore downtown, the other shopping center areas, the Homespun Treasures crafters mall,” she said. “We have a lot of unique shops people aren’t aware of.”

As tourism leaders in other parts of the county try to convince visitors to spend their entertainment time locally, their counterparts in Thousand Oaks have a different approach.

“Thousand Oaks is a safe haven,” said Steve Rubenstein, president of the Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce. “Most important for people is the safety and security they need in a destination point. People rent a car here, sleep here and then travel to Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, the wineries past Santa Barbara.”

Last month, Thousand Oaks was rated by the FBI as the safest city in the country with a population of more than 100,000. Rubenstein expects the honor will lead to a rise in visitors.

In addition to promoting the safety of the area, plans for 1996 include continued marketing of the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, the Reagan Library near Simi Valley, two new Native American cultural centers--one in Thousand Oaks and one in Newbury Park--and a planned revitalization of the retail area on Thousand Oaks Boulevard between the Arts Plaza and Hampshire Road.

“We’ve begun plans to work more closely with the city with regard to promotions, and we’re looking at an enhanced economic development plan with the chamber at the helm,” Rubenstein said. “Part of the plan would include tourism.”

He said the development plan would include a three-part approach: “trying to encourage new businesses, maintaining current businesses, and tourism--bringing in outside people to bring fresh dollars into the area.”