Tall Ships - a success… a failure… a success…
September 12th, 2008 by Republican By DefaultFirst there were claims that Tall Ships Tacoma was a success, although turnout was lower than expected. Then it came out that the event lost money. Now a report has come out that shows some successes for the event. I think there’s something to learn here for our city, if they’ll pay attention.
Since I don’t have the actual report I’m going to have to go by a TNT blog entry, which generally slant in a particular political direction with regard to local issues. But there are some things that can be gleaned.
And of the roughly 300,000 people attended this year’s event about 48,000 visitors came from more than 50 miles away. On average, they stayed 2.6 days and spent $88.09 per person per day.
That’s good news, right? Well maybe not. That means that 16% of the people who attended presumably were drawn to the event from outside the area. But later in the article information was given about another Tall Ships event, just North of here.
Officials from the Victoria, B.C., event said their festival, held June 26-29, attracted 32,535 paid attendees and generated $5.8 million toward the local economy.About 44 percent came from beyond Vancouver Island to attend the event, including about 5 percent from Washington.
Granted it was a smaller event, and the population of Vancourver Island isn’t what Tacoma / Pierce County is, but what’s interesting is the percentage and number that came in from elsewhere. The Vancouver event, which was roughly one-tenth the size of Tacoma’s, attracted 13,400 people from outside their area (44%).
I’m sure part of Victoria’s success in that regard was was spillover from the rest of the tourist trade in that city, which is head-and-shoulders above Tacoma’s, but that’s still a pretty good draw. So why did Tacoma fail to draw people from outside the area? Maybe it’s because Tacoma isn’t a tourist destination.
The recent consulting effort by AngelouEconomics of Houston showed that tourism is not likely to be a successful primary industry in Tacoma. They did say it would grow as primary industries’ grow, but it’s not worth the effort or money to try to build it up ahead of the other industries growth.
If Tall Ships Tacoma 2011 wants to be a success, they’ll need to scale down and focus on drawing people from the South Sound and the Peninsula. Drawing people from further away isn’t worth the effort at this point.
Also in the article were tax revenues, which basically showed that the event was a wash both for the state ($1.1 million revenue which offset a $1 million grant for improvements, and $229,014 in local sales tax, I don’t have the figures on how much the city put into it, but I’m guessing it was that much or more.)
Impact to businesses was good. The statement that there was “$10.2 million in ‘new money,’ or the economic impact of visitors and visiting vendors” is difficult to interpret because the money in view here becomes less every time it changes hands. Basically what I’m saying is that the whole $10.2 million isn’t staying in Tacoma, but a significant portion will.
The next statement I’m less inclined to agree with, namely “$6.6 million in retained local economic impact, or money that would have left the area without the festival.” I’m not so sure that’s the money would have left the area. It’s very possible that the money would have stayed here because of a simple fact that when the economy is down long distance travel for vacations also slows. With the high price of fuel it’s very possible that people would have stayed in the area and done something else. But it’s great that there was such an event to attend in lieu of a traveling vacation.
Be sure to check out my previous post on this issue:
Tourism cart before the horse; Update: yet another?