Ken Rodriguez: Spurs brought championship here, so where were the tourists?
Web Posted: 10/16/2007 11:06 PM CDT
Express-News
Local tourism took a hit after the Spurs won their fourth NBA championship, and it’s hard to know whom to blame.
Mark Cuban?
The Cleveland Cavaliers?
Tony Parker and Eva Longoria?
Officially, tourism leaders blame unusual, Seattle-like rain for a precipitous drop in visitors during July, the peak month of travel.
But evidence points to other factors. And besides, who says in June: “Honey, let’s not go to San Antonio next month, it might be raining”?
Smart travelers do not expect a South Texas deluge in July. They expect a drought.
The smart traveler says, “Honey, the weather in San Antonio will be hot, humid and miserable, the Alamo will be overrun with tourists, and the River Walk will be so crowded, we might get knocked into the green, murky water. Wanna go?”
For some reason, the smart traveler this year said, “No.”
According to the Convention & Visitors Bureau, hotels reported a 77.6 percent occupancy rate in July — down from 83.5 percent in July 2006.
These figures run contrary to a historical trend. When the Spurs win a championship in June, there’s a tourist bump in July. Hotel rooms fill up. Cash flows. The Greater Chamber says, “Cha-ching!”
When the Spurs won in 2005, the July hotel occupancy rate climbed from 2004. When they won in 2003, the rate rose from 2002. The mid-summer bump didn’t happen this year, and hotel occupancy isn’t the only indicator. The Alamo reported 273,508 visitors in July, compared with 336,433 the same month in 2006.
Where’d everyone go?
Poteet?
They sure didn’t go to Dallas, home of Mark Cuban, the Mavericks and a gazillion JFK conspiracy theories.
But they surely went somewhere, and some wonder if Cuban is responsible. He is, after all, the billionaire owner who likened the San Antonio River to a mud hole. His expletive-laced description appeared in newspapers across the country, and while some locals cursed him, others nodded and said: “Amen, brother. The river is so foul, the devil would puke if he fell in.”
There’s one problem with the Cuban theory. Several weeks after he trashed the river, the city recorded a hotel occupancy rate of 83.5 percent, the second-highest figure this century.
If the tourism industry wants to assign blame, it can begin with the Cleveland Cavaliers. They didn’t give the Spurs a championship series. They gave Tim Duncan and Co. a cocktail before Parker’s wedding.
The Spurs didn’t sweat the Cavs. They swept them in four games, and booked a flight to France.
It didn’t matter that ABC-TV touted San Antonio with almost $10 million worth of free advertising, showing cutaway shots of the Alamo, the River Walk and other landmarks. Spurs-Cavs was a snoozer. It was the least-watched NBA finals in television history.
If viewers drew one message from the series, it was this: Why visit San Antonio? It’ll put me to sleep.
Greg Gallaspy, executive director of the Paseo del Rio Association offers another theory. “Maybe everybody was in France,” Gallaspy says. “Maybe the tourists were at the Tony and Eva wedding.”
He has a point. The Parker-Longoria wedding was a huge summer event, held in July, no less. The invitation list was limited, but everyone wanted to be there. If the French wanted to see Parker, why fly to San Antonio when they could drive to Paris? Besides, the wedding list included a who’s who of Hollywood stars.
Looking back, maybe that’s why Parker delivered an MVP performance. He knew he’d be stealing tourists and wanted to soften the blow.
The city will forgive him, but tourism leaders have two Spurs requests: Please, no more Hollywood weddings in July. And no more sleep-inducing opponents in June.