San Francisco is one of the world's top tourism draws, but the city and surrounding Bay Area seem as eager as any Nowheresville to launch new projects and become even more popular.
That much became clear the other day when the nonprofit San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau hosted its 100th annual luncheon, attracting nearly 1,000 travel-biz types to Moscone West, in the downtown convention center. Once they squeezed inside, the luncheon guests swilled wine and sipped cocktails - I didn't have any but they looked like martinis to me - this, at mid-day, before heading back to their offices. Woo-hoo! Let it never be said that San Francisco doesn't know how to party.
Beyond the centennial celebratory mood, though, matters were serious, as befits the city's biggest industry. Tourism generates $7.8 billion per year in revenue, according to the SFCVB's numbers-crunchers. Forty-four percent of visitor spending comes from international travelers, drawn to what many of them say is America's most European city. (Are they flattering us? Maybe. But we like to think it's so.) Moreover, the travel industry employs tens of thousands - more than any other business in town, even San Francisco's vaunted high-tech sector. But, as people around the planet have noticed, the world in still in the grip of a deep recession, so being nimble and inventive is crucial now, past successes notwithstanding.
I was surprised to learn that one item on the agenda of the bureau's new Centennial Project is choosing a new name for itself - maybe. I'll leave it to greater marketing minds than mine to decide whether this is necessary. Other cities, such as New York, with its NYC agency, have done this, but 'Convention and Visitors Bureau' has the virtue of telling people exactly what the organization does. Still, San Francisco authorities seem intent on rebranding the city, to keep up with or out in front of competitors. That's the 'resets' of the headline on this post.
"Rebuilds' is of more interest to me and, I suspect, visitors to San Francisco - as well as many of the 7 million people who live in the region. And there is tangible progress on this front, especially when it comes to travel and transportation infrastructure. To wit:
* A long-awaited cruise ship terminal, needed to replace outmoded facilities at a vintage wooden finger pier on San Francisco Bay that once served the old Matson Line ships, is being mooted for completion in 2014. San Francisco is not in the same league as Vancouver or Hong Kong as a cruise stop, but some 250,000 cruise ship customers visit the city annually and local tourism leaders think there is potential for many more.
* A wholly new Transbay transit terminal, to replace a delapidated and depressing facility opened in the 1930s, is on the agenda, too. It is scheduled for completion in 2017, at a cost of $1.81 billion. This will be the hub of the city's bus and tram system, which many visitors rely on to get around town, as do commuters. It may also serve as a terminus point of California's proposed high-speed rail line, which has received state voter endorsement and some needed federal funding. The system could be decades away, but at least a start has been made. At present, with the partial exception of the U.S. Northeast, America's train system - let alone high-speed rail - is a national embarassment. Changing that should be a high priority.
* In the short term, travelers will see a revamped and reopened passenger terminal at San Francisco International Airport, the Bay Area's busiest. This is the former international terminal, closed to passengers since late 2000 when a sparkling new international terminal was opened, and used for storage and offices ever since. The target for reopening - for domestic traffic this time - is spring of next year. Over the past decade, this has been SFO's version of the Arabian peninsula's Empty Quarter. It will be nice to see it humming and busy again, filled with updated facilities for travelers.
The Great Recession is a challenge to everyone, but an invigorated San Francisco is still very much on the travel map, and showing signs of staying there for some time to come.
Showing posts with label San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau. Show all posts
Showing posts with label San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau. Show all posts
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Selling California
You wouldn't think a place as famous as California - one of the planet's most charismatic tourist draws -would need to sell itself. But you'd be wrong, especially in these days of heightened competition and lowered economic expectations.
I recently attended a coffee and pastry morning get-together at San Francisco's Pier 39, a tourist magnet on the city's beautiful northern waterfront. The gathering was held to mark the official opening of a new California Welcome Center, one of 17 outposts around the Golden State where visiting travelers can find brochures, ask questions, pick up maps and get tips from designated staffers that the California Travel and Tourism Commission is pleased to call concierges. The Pier 39 office, which has relocated upstairs to the second level of the big, restored wooden pier with its shops, food eateries, and rowdy resident sea lions - is decidedly bigger than its predecessor. Airy and washed with natural light, it includes a priority mail center for the USPS, several PCs set up for use, even lockers to store luggage while you walk around nearby Fishermans Wharf to see the sights. I'm happy to give it a plug.
Tourism is, as you might guess, big business in California, and in San Francisco, one of the state's most popular lures for travelers. The Golden State saw a staggering 351 million people who "traveled to and through California in 2008'' - the most recent year for which figures are available - according to the CTTC. Most were Californians, many were other Americans, about 13.4 million were international travelers. Together they spent $97.6 billion in 2008. That sounds like a lot, but domestic U.S. visitors actually dropped 1 percent from 2007, while domestic air traffic at the state's airports fell 3.6 percent from 2007.
Thus, the push to raise the state's profile and give travelers a helping hand. The Pier 39 California Welcome Center, marked by a large, easy to see sign on level 2 near the heritage Eagle Cafe, was expanded because it is the second most-visited California Welcome Center in the state, CTTC officials on the scene told me. I can see why. Pier 39 is a must-stop for most first-timers, is family friendly and gives access to many other waterside attractions in San Francisco, such as the Presidio, Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco Bay.
Well-regarded though it may be, the city of San Francisco has also seen a recent drop in visitors. Visitor numbers hit 15.4 million in 2009, down 5.8 percent from 2008, according to the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau, which tracks the numbers. Visitors' spending in 2009 was $7.8 billion, down 7.6 percent from 2008, while tourism tax revenue - driven mainly by a city tax on hotel room rates - dropped a precipitous 19.2 percent.
These, I fear, are products of the Great Recession, and visitor numbers won't rebound fully until the recession ends. Cross your fingers, open your wallet as much as you dare and let's hope the recession doesn't develop a double-dip.
I recently attended a coffee and pastry morning get-together at San Francisco's Pier 39, a tourist magnet on the city's beautiful northern waterfront. The gathering was held to mark the official opening of a new California Welcome Center, one of 17 outposts around the Golden State where visiting travelers can find brochures, ask questions, pick up maps and get tips from designated staffers that the California Travel and Tourism Commission is pleased to call concierges. The Pier 39 office, which has relocated upstairs to the second level of the big, restored wooden pier with its shops, food eateries, and rowdy resident sea lions - is decidedly bigger than its predecessor. Airy and washed with natural light, it includes a priority mail center for the USPS, several PCs set up for use, even lockers to store luggage while you walk around nearby Fishermans Wharf to see the sights. I'm happy to give it a plug.
Tourism is, as you might guess, big business in California, and in San Francisco, one of the state's most popular lures for travelers. The Golden State saw a staggering 351 million people who "traveled to and through California in 2008'' - the most recent year for which figures are available - according to the CTTC. Most were Californians, many were other Americans, about 13.4 million were international travelers. Together they spent $97.6 billion in 2008. That sounds like a lot, but domestic U.S. visitors actually dropped 1 percent from 2007, while domestic air traffic at the state's airports fell 3.6 percent from 2007.
Thus, the push to raise the state's profile and give travelers a helping hand. The Pier 39 California Welcome Center, marked by a large, easy to see sign on level 2 near the heritage Eagle Cafe, was expanded because it is the second most-visited California Welcome Center in the state, CTTC officials on the scene told me. I can see why. Pier 39 is a must-stop for most first-timers, is family friendly and gives access to many other waterside attractions in San Francisco, such as the Presidio, Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco Bay.
Well-regarded though it may be, the city of San Francisco has also seen a recent drop in visitors. Visitor numbers hit 15.4 million in 2009, down 5.8 percent from 2008, according to the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau, which tracks the numbers. Visitors' spending in 2009 was $7.8 billion, down 7.6 percent from 2008, while tourism tax revenue - driven mainly by a city tax on hotel room rates - dropped a precipitous 19.2 percent.
These, I fear, are products of the Great Recession, and visitor numbers won't rebound fully until the recession ends. Cross your fingers, open your wallet as much as you dare and let's hope the recession doesn't develop a double-dip.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Pow Wow - Yowza!
This year's enormous U.S. Travel Association confab, International Pow Wow, isn't set to take place until next month in Orlando, Florida, but already organizers are beavering away, planning next year's gathering in San Francisco. Along with the World Travel Mart in London and the annual global travel industry version of Woodstock in Berlin, Pow Wow ranks among the leading travel biz meetings on the planet. So, it takes a lot of planning.
Why should you care? Well, with more than 400 international journalists set to cover it, Pow Wow, which includes media tours, news conferences and networking opportunities galore, will go a long way toward shaping the stories you see, read and hear in the next year about traveling to and within the United States. And the sales opportunities that all that face-time - the event lasts five days - affords to people who run hotels, airlines, tourist boards, tour companies, cruise-ship lines and the like will help determine what those people put on offer for travelers.
Travel-biz people from more than 70 countries are expected to attend the Orlando edition of Pow Wow. There will be some 1,100 information booths in South Hall at Orlando's Orange County Convention Center and 5,000 travel biz types on hand to visit them.
For the host city, the event, which changes venues every year, is a big deal.
Next year's International Pow Wow will be held at San Francisco's Moscone Center, and tourism people in the northern California city are even as we speak drawing up to-do lists, planning social and business networking events and anticipating receipts.
According to numbers-crunchers at the nonprofit San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau (www.onlyinsanfrancisco.com), the host organization for the 2011 Pow Wow, to be held next May 21-25, the big travel show will generate $4.5 million in event-related spending (hotel rooms, labor, convention center food and beverage sales) and $2 million in spending by individual attendees (restaurant meals, shopping, taxis). In the long term, all those journalists parachuting into San Francisco are expected to write 300 to 400 articles about the city; the stories will appear in media outlets with a combined circulation estimated at 100 million. By the SFCVB's reckoning, that worldwide exposure is equal to spending $5.3 million on advertising to promote the city.
So, yes, travel is big business.
U.S. Travel, Pow Wow's sponsoring umbrella organization, was for years known as the Travel Industry Association of America, till it changed its name recently. U.S. Travel (www.ustravel.org) doesn't yet know where it will hold Pow Wow in 2012, but the host city for 2013 has already been selected: It's Las Vegas, baby.
Come 2013, what happens in Vegas will presumably NOT stay in Vegas.
Why should you care? Well, with more than 400 international journalists set to cover it, Pow Wow, which includes media tours, news conferences and networking opportunities galore, will go a long way toward shaping the stories you see, read and hear in the next year about traveling to and within the United States. And the sales opportunities that all that face-time - the event lasts five days - affords to people who run hotels, airlines, tourist boards, tour companies, cruise-ship lines and the like will help determine what those people put on offer for travelers.
Travel-biz people from more than 70 countries are expected to attend the Orlando edition of Pow Wow. There will be some 1,100 information booths in South Hall at Orlando's Orange County Convention Center and 5,000 travel biz types on hand to visit them.
For the host city, the event, which changes venues every year, is a big deal.
Next year's International Pow Wow will be held at San Francisco's Moscone Center, and tourism people in the northern California city are even as we speak drawing up to-do lists, planning social and business networking events and anticipating receipts.
According to numbers-crunchers at the nonprofit San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau (www.onlyinsanfrancisco.com), the host organization for the 2011 Pow Wow, to be held next May 21-25, the big travel show will generate $4.5 million in event-related spending (hotel rooms, labor, convention center food and beverage sales) and $2 million in spending by individual attendees (restaurant meals, shopping, taxis). In the long term, all those journalists parachuting into San Francisco are expected to write 300 to 400 articles about the city; the stories will appear in media outlets with a combined circulation estimated at 100 million. By the SFCVB's reckoning, that worldwide exposure is equal to spending $5.3 million on advertising to promote the city.
So, yes, travel is big business.
U.S. Travel, Pow Wow's sponsoring umbrella organization, was for years known as the Travel Industry Association of America, till it changed its name recently. U.S. Travel (www.ustravel.org) doesn't yet know where it will hold Pow Wow in 2012, but the host city for 2013 has already been selected: It's Las Vegas, baby.
Come 2013, what happens in Vegas will presumably NOT stay in Vegas.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Bright Intervals
If you've traveled in Britain you may have checked out forecasts for always-variable British weather. You know, the ones that call for "bright intervals of sunshine'' - forecasters' lingo for saying they don't quite know what to expect but figure some of it is bound to be be good.
I was reminded of this delightul expression by the travel-biz forecast at the recent San Francisco Convention and Visitor Bureau's Outlook conference, an annual event put on for and by industry-figures. The SFCVB and invited presenters crunch numbers globally, nationally, regionally and locally, to get a fix on what the year ahead will bring in travel and tourism.
Why should you care? Well, looking closely at the world of travel from one of the world's most popular urban destinations gives hints of prices to come in air travel, cruise ship packages, and hotels and resorts, as well as previews conditions travelers can expect to encounter when it comes to new rules and regulations, security matters, and other issues.
How popular is San Francisco? One pretty good indication: The California city has been voted most popular U.S. city in Conde Nast Traveler magazine's readers' survey 17 years in a row. Tourism is the city by the bay's largest source of revenue, and its travel business generates 70,000 jobs. Even in San Francisco, however, 2009 was a terrible year: the $7.8 billion USD spent by visitors fell 8.2 percent from 2008, not an especially strong year. The 15.4 million visitors dropped 6 percent from 2008. That's down 9 percent from the peak year 2000.
The hotel analysts, aviation-watchers, airport executives and travel-biz consultants who spoke at the 5-hour Outlook conference came to a rough consensus: 2010 will be better than 2009, but the recovery will continue to be gradual, even sluggish, especially for hotels. Airlines and airports will be more crowded than last year and thus their revenue should rise. But the global economic travails that began with the Wall Street meltdown in September 2008 have resulted in what American Express executive James Keen called "a new cost-conscious culture.'' For perhaps the next 25 years, pennny-pinching will be "the new normal,'' Keen said.
Of course, what is bad for travel providers can be good for travelers, chiefly in the form of lower prices. Mid-range U.S. hotels will drop their room rates from 1 to 3 percent this year, according to Keen. High-end hotels will slash their rates even more - 2 to 4 percent - to lure guests.
Good news for road warriors, right? Yes, kind of. We all like to save money. Then, too, hotels need to make money in order to stay in business. The owners of the hard-hit Four Seasons Hotel in San Francisco nearly defaulted recently, thanks to the grim business climate, and that's a good hotel. There is always a trade-off between buyer and seller, supply and demand; tip too far for too long in either direction, and the resulting imbalance spells trouble.
Spurred in part by relatively low fares, air travel has begun to recover, with surging passenger demand felt most strongly right now in the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East, according to the Geneva-based airline trade organization the International Air Transport Association. In line with that, air fares are expected to keep rising this year. For example, Keen expects international, long-haul fares to rise 1 to 6 percent, while international economy-class fares should nudge up 1 to 3 percent.
Of course, travel, for leisure or business, won't strongly recover until world economic conditions get a whole lot more robust. New crises, like the debt and deficit squeeze in Greece, don't help.
But one economist at the Outlook conference was bullish. Tapan Munroe, former chief economist for the big California utility Pacific Gas & Electric Co., said he expects real growth in U.S. gross domestic product to rise 2.8 percent in 2010 - meaning the world's largest national economy could help lead a recovery from the Great Recession. He puts part of this down to U.S. innovation and entrepreneurship: "Silicon Valley is still the dominant innovation economy in the world,'' Munroe asserted.
So, what we have here is a good news, bad news situation. In short: bright intervals.
I was reminded of this delightul expression by the travel-biz forecast at the recent San Francisco Convention and Visitor Bureau's Outlook conference, an annual event put on for and by industry-figures. The SFCVB and invited presenters crunch numbers globally, nationally, regionally and locally, to get a fix on what the year ahead will bring in travel and tourism.
Why should you care? Well, looking closely at the world of travel from one of the world's most popular urban destinations gives hints of prices to come in air travel, cruise ship packages, and hotels and resorts, as well as previews conditions travelers can expect to encounter when it comes to new rules and regulations, security matters, and other issues.
How popular is San Francisco? One pretty good indication: The California city has been voted most popular U.S. city in Conde Nast Traveler magazine's readers' survey 17 years in a row. Tourism is the city by the bay's largest source of revenue, and its travel business generates 70,000 jobs. Even in San Francisco, however, 2009 was a terrible year: the $7.8 billion USD spent by visitors fell 8.2 percent from 2008, not an especially strong year. The 15.4 million visitors dropped 6 percent from 2008. That's down 9 percent from the peak year 2000.
The hotel analysts, aviation-watchers, airport executives and travel-biz consultants who spoke at the 5-hour Outlook conference came to a rough consensus: 2010 will be better than 2009, but the recovery will continue to be gradual, even sluggish, especially for hotels. Airlines and airports will be more crowded than last year and thus their revenue should rise. But the global economic travails that began with the Wall Street meltdown in September 2008 have resulted in what American Express executive James Keen called "a new cost-conscious culture.'' For perhaps the next 25 years, pennny-pinching will be "the new normal,'' Keen said.
Of course, what is bad for travel providers can be good for travelers, chiefly in the form of lower prices. Mid-range U.S. hotels will drop their room rates from 1 to 3 percent this year, according to Keen. High-end hotels will slash their rates even more - 2 to 4 percent - to lure guests.
Good news for road warriors, right? Yes, kind of. We all like to save money. Then, too, hotels need to make money in order to stay in business. The owners of the hard-hit Four Seasons Hotel in San Francisco nearly defaulted recently, thanks to the grim business climate, and that's a good hotel. There is always a trade-off between buyer and seller, supply and demand; tip too far for too long in either direction, and the resulting imbalance spells trouble.
Spurred in part by relatively low fares, air travel has begun to recover, with surging passenger demand felt most strongly right now in the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East, according to the Geneva-based airline trade organization the International Air Transport Association. In line with that, air fares are expected to keep rising this year. For example, Keen expects international, long-haul fares to rise 1 to 6 percent, while international economy-class fares should nudge up 1 to 3 percent.
Of course, travel, for leisure or business, won't strongly recover until world economic conditions get a whole lot more robust. New crises, like the debt and deficit squeeze in Greece, don't help.
But one economist at the Outlook conference was bullish. Tapan Munroe, former chief economist for the big California utility Pacific Gas & Electric Co., said he expects real growth in U.S. gross domestic product to rise 2.8 percent in 2010 - meaning the world's largest national economy could help lead a recovery from the Great Recession. He puts part of this down to U.S. innovation and entrepreneurship: "Silicon Valley is still the dominant innovation economy in the world,'' Munroe asserted.
So, what we have here is a good news, bad news situation. In short: bright intervals.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
San Francisco Tourism Ramps Up, Recession or No
SAN FRANCISCO - One of the planet's perennially popular travel destinations is ramping up its $8 billion-plus tourism industry, recession or no. The idea, this city's tourism officials explain, is to innovate and market your way through tough times like these.
The San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau - a century-old organization that promotes tourism in the city by the bay - allows that hard economic times present plenty of challenges, yet it managed to announce good news at today's annual luncheon for bureau members and media. Visitors' spending actually went up in 2008, the SFCVB's numbers-crunchers reported, rising to $8.52 billion, an increase of 3.3 percent. Visitor numbers crept up, too; there were 16.4 million visitors to San Francsico in 2008, an increase of 1.7 percent from 2007, a prosperous year till the fourth quarter, when the recession began.
That's not spectacular growth, but the fact that growth happened at all is remarkable given the global economic meltdown that got underway in earnest last year.
Some of San Francisco's experience is specific to this city. But the continuing success of travel and tourism here in the teeth of the Great Recession may hold some lessons - and encouragement - for other places, as well.
Marketing, along with innovation and determination, drove the growth, according to SFCVB officials, who held forth at a packed luncheon today at Moscone West, part of the city's downtown convention center.
Over beef and crab cakes and California wines, the organization's president and chief executive officer, Joe D'Alessandro, ticked off the whys and wherefores of success.
Simply put, San Francisco markets the daylights out of itself. You may have seen San Francisco's advertisements in Conde Nast Traveler, Vanity Fair and the New Yorker magazines. Moreover, San Francisco has avidly embraced social media: The city is closing in on 100,000 followers on Twitter and promotes itself on Facebook. The SFCVB also has a lively, richly detailed and easy to navigate Web site: www.onlyinsanfrancisco.com, and created targeted microsites, such as the arty site www.onlyinsanfrancisco.com/artsf.
Of course, San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area have something to sell: Good weather, excellent food and drink, a diverse and lively populace, a lovely location and striking confluence of water and hills. The city continues to undergo a building boom, sprouting new skyscrapers - nothing to rival China or Dubai, but construction is holding steady. The old international terminal at San Francisco International Airport, closed since 2000, is being renovated for reopening as a domestic terminal. The superb California Academy of Sciences opened last year in a sparkling new, eco-friendly building in Golden Gate Park. A $5 billion mass transit center is in the works on the site of the well-worn Transbay Terminal. A long-promised (and long-delayed) cruise ship terminal is in the pipeline (fingers crossed). And a new art museum is set to open in the Presidio, a former military base with spectacular vistas overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.
Some of San Francisco's success is just dumb luck - those views, that location - but some comes about through a spirit of innovation and plain hard work that can be duplicated in other places, too. To cite another example - one shared by other smart, pro-active cities - San Francisco is adroit at landing blockbuster tourist attractions. Opening a few days ago at the de Young Museum is a glittering exhibition (through March 29, 2010) of ancient Egyptian artifacts: "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs.'' Concurrently, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is another big one: "Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities'' (through Sept. 7), showcasing the work of two great American photographers.
Many elements go into making a success, and getting it right isn't easy. San Francisco does it better than most. But marketing, innovation and determination can work anywhere - and help hurry along the end of hard times.
The San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau - a century-old organization that promotes tourism in the city by the bay - allows that hard economic times present plenty of challenges, yet it managed to announce good news at today's annual luncheon for bureau members and media. Visitors' spending actually went up in 2008, the SFCVB's numbers-crunchers reported, rising to $8.52 billion, an increase of 3.3 percent. Visitor numbers crept up, too; there were 16.4 million visitors to San Francsico in 2008, an increase of 1.7 percent from 2007, a prosperous year till the fourth quarter, when the recession began.
That's not spectacular growth, but the fact that growth happened at all is remarkable given the global economic meltdown that got underway in earnest last year.
Some of San Francisco's experience is specific to this city. But the continuing success of travel and tourism here in the teeth of the Great Recession may hold some lessons - and encouragement - for other places, as well.
Marketing, along with innovation and determination, drove the growth, according to SFCVB officials, who held forth at a packed luncheon today at Moscone West, part of the city's downtown convention center.
Over beef and crab cakes and California wines, the organization's president and chief executive officer, Joe D'Alessandro, ticked off the whys and wherefores of success.
Simply put, San Francisco markets the daylights out of itself. You may have seen San Francisco's advertisements in Conde Nast Traveler, Vanity Fair and the New Yorker magazines. Moreover, San Francisco has avidly embraced social media: The city is closing in on 100,000 followers on Twitter and promotes itself on Facebook. The SFCVB also has a lively, richly detailed and easy to navigate Web site: www.onlyinsanfrancisco.com, and created targeted microsites, such as the arty site www.onlyinsanfrancisco.com/artsf.
Of course, San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area have something to sell: Good weather, excellent food and drink, a diverse and lively populace, a lovely location and striking confluence of water and hills. The city continues to undergo a building boom, sprouting new skyscrapers - nothing to rival China or Dubai, but construction is holding steady. The old international terminal at San Francisco International Airport, closed since 2000, is being renovated for reopening as a domestic terminal. The superb California Academy of Sciences opened last year in a sparkling new, eco-friendly building in Golden Gate Park. A $5 billion mass transit center is in the works on the site of the well-worn Transbay Terminal. A long-promised (and long-delayed) cruise ship terminal is in the pipeline (fingers crossed). And a new art museum is set to open in the Presidio, a former military base with spectacular vistas overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.
Some of San Francisco's success is just dumb luck - those views, that location - but some comes about through a spirit of innovation and plain hard work that can be duplicated in other places, too. To cite another example - one shared by other smart, pro-active cities - San Francisco is adroit at landing blockbuster tourist attractions. Opening a few days ago at the de Young Museum is a glittering exhibition (through March 29, 2010) of ancient Egyptian artifacts: "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs.'' Concurrently, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is another big one: "Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities'' (through Sept. 7), showcasing the work of two great American photographers.
Many elements go into making a success, and getting it right isn't easy. San Francisco does it better than most. But marketing, innovation and determination can work anywhere - and help hurry along the end of hard times.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)