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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
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San Diego Shows Well on an International Stage

There’s little doubt that San Diego felt a revenue bump from the finals of the World Baseball Classic that drew sellout crowds to Petco Park.

But in the long run, the high-profile event is more apt to be measured in terms of the national and international publicity it garnered for San Diego rather than the taxes it generated, tourism officials are saying.

The numbers aren’t all in. However, they contend that the economic impact of hosting the inaugural tournament’s final games March 18-20 won’t come close to approaching that of the 2003 Super Bowl, which analysts believe had a regional economic impact of $367 million and pushed San Diego to the No. 3 spot among the top 25 destinations nationwide in terms of hotel occupancy that year.

“The Super Bowl though is a national tradition. It was a weeklong event that included parties and other ancillary events,” said Sal Giametta, spokesman for the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Reint Reinders, the president and chief executive officer of ConVis agreed, but he said the publicity the WBC brought to San Diego “is priceless.”

“I’d say it was like a mini-Olympics, to see the flags waving and the fireworks. It was quite spectacular,” Reinders said. “San Diego did a tremendous job. Everything was quality.”


An International Playing Field

Although ConVis doesn’t have a budget for international advertising, Reinders said he wouldn’t expect the tournament’s news coverage to supplant that. It hasn’t generated any tourism inquiries from abroad to date.

On the international and national front, however, the media attention helped to underscore the versatility of Petco Park and its ability to draw capacity crowds for major sporting and entertainment events, Reinders said, adding, there’s “no reason” a World Cup soccer competition couldn’t be held there.

“This was primarily a sports story, but it was also about the community, and it sends the message that there’s a lot going on here,” he said. “So it keeps San Diego top of mind.”

The city’s contribution in staging the final rounds of the tournament, which featured teams from Europe, the Caribbean, Asia and North America, also took Major League Baseball one step further in its “strategic plan of achieving worldwide appeal,” Reinders added.


The Lodging Side Of The Equation

Since the 1,625-room Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel served as the headquarters for the Cuban and Japanese teams, it likely reaped the biggest chunk of series-related businesses locally.

“For us it was like having the Padres go to postseason,” said Rob Cameron, its director of sales and marketing. “But the biggest impact for San Diego, on the whole, was the media exposure to the rest of the world.”

However, the tally of hotel bookings during the series, which saw Japan defeat Cuba 10-6 on March 20 in the championship game, isn’t expected to increase the county’s overall occupancy rate by much.

“There were probably no more than a couple thousand rooms booked for the event,” Reinders said.

Because they were all relegated to Downtown though City Hall will rake in more from the transient occupancy tax during March on a year-over-year monthly basis.

Meanwhile, February through May comprise the peak season for citywide conventions. And so far, Reinders said, tourism statistics for the county, as a whole, are exceeding last year’s numbers.


Rains Dampen Dining

Gaslamp Quarter restaurateurs, who could have expected high numbers of visitors from the ranks of WBC game-goers, particularly on March 17 , the eve of the semifinals , were disappointed. Even the usual crowd of St. Patrick’s Day revelers was thin compared with years past.

“All the information I have now is simply anecdotal,” Dan Flores, marketing manager for the 425-member Gaslamp Quarter Association. “But from what I’m hearing, the restaurants didn’t fare as well as they usually do when the Padres are playing in town.”

The rains that hit Downtown throughout the weekend were mostly to blame. But there might have been more local residents among the game goers if Team USA had advanced to the final two rounds.

“It may be that it was an international event, and the teams and players were not as well known to local residents,” Flores said.

Pam Richardson, the general manager of the 234-room Solamar, who reported a brisk business during the WBC, said that the guest register at the Downtown hotel comprised mostly national travelers, however.

“I wouldn’t say we saw more of an international crowd,” Richardson said. “We certainly saw a lot of people from out of town on Saturday night. Yet we normally get a lot of San Diego residents who come Downtown to play on weekends and stay at the hotel.”

Howard Buchanan, the general manager at the Palm, a 300-seat restaurant that opened on Sixth Avenue in December, said patronage during the WBC was good, although it would have been better if the city hadn’t closed off J Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues during the games.

“Parking was a bit of a challenge,” he said. “In general, I think the city could do better planning for parking.”

Ed Netzhammer, the general manager of the 511-room Omni San Diego Hotel, which is connected to Petco Park by a catwalk, said the bulk of his guest registry that weekend was made up of the tournament’s press corps and some of the foreign dignitaries who attended the games.

“All the meeting space was used, and we were close to being booked solid every single night from Friday through Monday,” he said. “January, February and March have all been great months anyway. And I’m sure we did a little better because of the World Baseball Classic, but not by a great amount.

“Corporate travel is coming back. We’re seeing substantially more business in corporate group travel.”

Ray Warren, the general manager of the 1,362-room Marriott Hotel and Marina, said it had a “small block of rooms” reserved for those in town for the series, yet that was all it could spare.

“We had several big conventions in, so we didn’t have a lot of rooms to give them anyway,” he said.

Starting in early March, the event was staged in Tokyo, Puerto Rico, Orlando, Fla., Phoenix and Scottsdale, Ariz., then moved on to Anaheim and finally to San Diego.

“In the grand scheme of things it was great for San Diego to be a host city,” Warren said.

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