Tourists Find County Good Spot to Spend

Slightly more visitors came to Orange County last year despite disruptive construction at Disneyland and the Anaheim Convention Center, and they spent much more money, travel and tourism experts said Wednesday.

A total of 38.05 million visitors descended on the county last year, up 0.8% from 1998. They spent $5.95 billion, up 4.3%, according to the Anaheim/Orange County Visitor and Convention Bureau.

The increase came despite lower attendance at Disneyland and the Convention Center, where construction projects, combined with nearby freeway expansions, have made it difficult to get around.

“I think we ended up on a high note considering everything that was going on,” bureau spokeswoman Elaine Cali said.

Final figures are still being compiled, but the travel and tourism industry throughout the region and the nation appears to have benefited from the strong economy, said Skip Hull, vice president of San Diego-based CIC Research, which provided the preliminary data to the county.

For example, hotels in most major domestic markets had better sales figures. Through October, hotel revenue was up 6.3% in Los Angeles, 7.1% in New York, 7.3% in Chicago and 8.2% in San Diego, according to Smith Travel Research, which monitors the industry nationally.

Orange County hotel revenue rose 5% during the same period despite the traffic-snarling disruptions in Anaheim, Hull said. “The Orange County hotel market was stronger than I had thought . . . because the economy has been so strong,” Hull said. The market has been fueled by foreign as well as domestic travelers.

Tour organizers say they are experiencing an upsurge in business from the Far East, thanks to the area’s economic recovery and fewer concerns about terrorism.

“We’re not fully recovered, but it’s way better than two years ago,” said John Lu, owner of Burbank-based Best of USA Marketing, which books visits for Asian groups. He said Korean and Taiwanese bookings are up sharply.

“No more economic crisis,” Lu said. “And no more embassy bombings--thank God.”

In another indication of the increase in foreign travelers, airlines serving the Pacific region are scrambling to add flights, said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles County.

That’s welcome news to Walt Disney Co. and the city of Anaheim, which together are spending $2 billion to expand, modernize and provide infrastructure in the Disneyland-Convention Center area.

Disneyland attendance fell 5% last year, to 13.4 million, according to Amusement Business, a trade publication. Attendance at trade shows and conventions totaled 767,689 at the Convention Center, up slightly from 1998 but far below levels in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the center regularly attracted more than 1 million.

“This year we’ll probably be back to 900,000,” Cali said. She predicted attendance again will top 1 million in 2001, when the Convention Center expansion is complete and Disney opens its second Anaheim park, California Adventure.

One big beneficiary of the Anaheim construction has been the Los Angeles Convention Center, which itself was recently expanded and modernized, and which has been courting national conventions.

But at least two major conventions that moved from Anaheim to Los Angeles in 1999 and stayed there this year will return under three-year deals that begin in 2001, Cali said. They are the National Assn. of Music Merchants, which draws 50,000 attendees, and the Western Cable Show, which attracts about 20,000.

The Orange County Tourism Council, which includes representatives from malls and cultural groups as well as visitor bureaus, hotels and theme parks, is working more closely than in the past to promote the area as a destination separate from Los Angeles, council co-chairman Bill Ross said.

At a council steering committee meeting last month, the discussion focused on an exhibit of precious objects from China’s Imperial Palace that opens Feb. 6 at Santa Ana’s Bowers Museum of Cultural Art and is expected to draw a large number of viewers from outside the area.

“If you go back five or six years ago, I don’t think all these entities would be sitting around the table discussing cultural opportunities,” Ross said. “There’s a much greater attention to the broad perspective of Orange County.”