THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 12, 1996 TAG: 9602100179
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Ted Evanoff
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
Where there were once sailors and saloons, docks and warehouses along the Elizabeth River, there are now Nauticus and Waterside.
Tourism. You have to hand it to Norfolk. The old seaport keeps trying.
On the East Coast, the old brick cities have been crumbling for decades, but Norfolk has worked hard to look modern.
Public and private money has made it a regional hub for transportation, medicine, education, sports, and the arts.
Despite the airliners and medical towers and classrooms, Norfolk is rolling the dice, trying to attract tourists. It's gambling for good reason. The tax base is boxed in.
Yes, more people work in Norfolk than reside in the city. But thousands of workers commute, and pay property taxes in their hometowns, chiefly Virginia Beach and Chesapeake, rather than in Norfolk, where the public schools depend on property taxes.
And while commercial districts thrive in Norfolk, large parts of town are off the tax rolls - the U.S. Navy alone covers about a quarter of the city.
As a result, Norfolk needs more income sources. Tourist tax dollars from hotels, restaurants, shops and museums are an obvious place.
The dice are still spinning, but last week Tidewater sensed where they may rest.
Norfolk city marketing director Samuel B. Rogers reported on The Virginia Waterfront tourism campaign.
What made the campaign unusual from the standpoint of Norfolk taxpayers was the message. And the price.
Launched in '94, the campaign set aside $3 million a year over two years to tout the region, not merely Norfolk.
The ads reminded Northeasterners the road from Williamsburg to the Oceanfront is short and sweet for vacationing families.
The subtle lesson in geography pressed home the notion of Williamsburg, Virginia Beach and Norfolk as neighbors, a fact that apparently had escaped notice in the Northeast.
Last summer, phone banks surveyed some of the 118,000 Northeasterners who dialed the ad's toll-free phone number. Rogers reported the survey results last week to the Norfolk City Council.
About 43,000 Northeastern households who saw or heard the ads visited Hampton Roads last year and spent an estimated $35 million, an average of $833 per family.
One figure important to Rogers was this: About 30 percent of the tourists were new visitors. The campaign was working, he said. As a rule of thumb, 20 percent of Tidewater's tourists are visiting for the first time.
It's tempting to call the campaign a success. It's more accurate to say the dice are still rolling.
If the Waterfront campaign pays off for the city, it'll pay off on the shores of the Elizabeth, where Norfolk built Waterside, a $22.3 million emporium of shops and restaurants, and Nauticus, a $52 million museum of ships and the sea. So far, the campaign hasn't meant much for the riverfront.
Nauticus stumbled badly, with attendance far below the 750,000 visits projected before it opened in '94.
Business in Waterside, which was new in '83, produced tax revenue last year of $1.95 million, only 3.2 percent more than in '94.
Several retailers said total sales last year fell 5 percent to 10 percent below the '94 level.
``I did see an increasing mix of tourists from (the hotels in) Virginia Beach and Williamsburg,'' said Gerry Garey, general manager of the Phillips Waterside restaurant.
``In that sense, the campaign was a success,'' he said. ``But one of my best months was (last December) when they brought the `Phantom of the Opera' to Norfolk.
``We did some market research and found we had people eating here who came from Raleigh and Richmond,'' Garey said. ``I think if you went to any of the standard restaurants in the downtown area like Freemason Abbey or ourselves you'd find they all had a marked improvement when the Phantom was here.
``It just goes to show you that if you have something to market, you can be successful,'' Garey said.
Fewer charter bus tourists came to Nauticus, diminishing Waterside's business compared to '94, Rogers said. The city will stimulate more bus charters this summer, he said.
And the Waterfront campaign, with its research in hand, has plans afoot to draw more tourists off season.
``We need to build up the tourism industry in this region, particularly in the spring and fall,'' Rogers said. by CNB