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Sure is sad to read this...
http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=99944&ran=26819
Tourists leave old Williamsburg out in the cold
Colonial Williamsburg was created in the 1920s in an effort to save the buildings and preserve the history of the city that served as the Virginia capital during the 1700s.
By MEGHAN HOYER, The Virginian-Pilot
© February 21, 2006
WILLIAMSBURG The quaint dirt roads of Colonial Williamsburg can seem empty these days.
Costumed characters still walk up and down the village lanes. Horses graze in fields near the Governors Palace. Yet the throngs of visitors have thinned in recent years. On warm days in winter, a look down Duke of Gloucester Street reveals only a smattering of guests making their way from the C olonial tavern to the shops of the hatmaker and silversmith .
It wasnt always like this in Colonial Williamsburg.
During its heyday in the 1980s, the 301-acre living history park attracted as many as 1.2 million paying visitors a year. The crowds would pack the village, filling local hotels and keeping stores and restaurants busy.
Since then, the annual paid attendance has fallen by a half million, leveling out at just more than 700,000 for the past several years.
Colonial Williamsburg is still the states top single tourist attraction, according to the Virginia Tourism Corp. , b ut the decline in attendance has hurt business and shifted the regions priorities. It has made the city of Williamsburg shift some of its focus away from tourism and caused worry for hoteliers and business owners who depend on the influx of visitors to make their living.
Hotel occupancy rates in the Williamsburg area are the lowest of any metropolitan region in Virginia, having fallen to less than 50 percent in the past two years. The city has seen a decline in businesses and overall employment in recent years, going against state trends. Colonial Williamsburg itself has had to lay off employees and close attractions to sustain its budget.
Its been a very difficult time, said Shannon Mueller, the president of the Williamsburg Hotel & Motel Association. Theres absolutely concern throughout town. The industry cannot sustain itself at current levels. The math just doesnt work.
When Colonial Williamsburg was created in the 1920s by the Rev. W.A.R. Goodwin and John D. Rockefeller Jr., the city of Williamsburg and the counties around it were quiet communities. Goodwin, rector of the Bruton Parish Church, wanted to save the old buildings and re-create the Colonial town that was the capital of Virginia throughout most of the 1700s.
From the time the first restored building opened in 1932, Goodwins vision took off, giving rise to a f oundation that is not only the citys biggest employer about 3,000 people work for Colonial Williamsburg but also the regions largest landholder. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation owns hotels, restaurants, several museums and huge tracts of undeveloped land across the region.
In the 1980s, the open-air museum, with its costumed townspeople, working craftsmen and carriage rides, was attracting on average more than 1 million people a year.
Those numbers remained fairly constant until the recession of the early 1990s, when attendance dipped to well less than a million. It continued to drop despite f oundation officials claims each year that a new attraction, marketing effort or educational program would bring visitors back to previous levels.
In recent years, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation has had to dip more heavily into its healthy endowment to make up operating budget deficits, f oundation President Colin Campbell said. He acknowledged that although the endowment was still growing because of investment returns, the f oundation couldnt continue raiding its savings to make ends meet.
The news isnt all gloomy. For the first time in five years, annual paid attendance for the Jamestown Settlement has exceeded the previous year, according to the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation. Busch Gardens Williamsburg and Water Country USA also have seen attendance increase in the p ast couple of years.
Colonial Williamsburg also saw a slight uptick in attendance last year. The historical destination drew 3,000 more paying visitors than in 2004, b ut officials acknowledge the numbers are far from what they were 20 years ago.
This place ought to be attracting substantially more people than we are today, Campbell said. Historical sites in general and this site in particular really needed to think about what todays vacationer wants.
So why arent people coming to Colonial Williamsburg?
Some of it can be chalked up to a trend away from re-created historical attractions. Living history museums nationwide Colonial Williamsburg is the biggest of a collection of museums that includes Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts and other re-created pioneer villages have seen sharp decreases in attendance in recent years.
That larger problem has alarmed museum administrators, who have worried about whether their facilities offer enough hands-on activities and whether their interpretations register with todays multicultural audience.
As far as living history sites go, is it because people are having a harder time connecting with what living history sites do? asked Lynne Belluscio, president of the Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums. I think thats what were seeing people asking themselves, 'Is that my history, And can I make that connection? Its harder to make those connections.
Belluscio also wonders if living history museums are lacking what she calls the get back in line factor the excitement that makes people jump off a roller coaster and run immediately back into line to ride again.
Colonial Williamsburg bills itself as a multiday experience and charges visitors accordingly in 2005 , an adult one-day pass cost $34. In the tourism arena, Williamsburg is going up against major attractions and activities .
As families more often choose active, adventure-filled vacations, Colonial Williamsburg has slipped off the list, some said.
The vacation dollar only goes so far, Campbell said. In the 1990s, it became clear there were increasing competitive forces, a nd the vacation dollar was increasingly not coming here. Its a tremendously competitive market now. Thats just the reality of today.
Colonial Williamsburgs decline has taken a toll across the region.
According to the city of Williamsburgs Economic Development department, the total number of businesses in Williamsburg has declined since 1998. That bucks a state growth trend. The citys employment figures are similarly headed the wrong way nearly 2,000 fewer people worked in the city in 2004 than did in 2001.
Nearly all that reduction was in the tourism industry, which has seen employee numbers drop since 1990.
Oddly, the trouble has been compounded by new businesses moving into the area. Even in the face of a tough market, several hotels have opened around Williamsburg in the p ast few years. The increase in rooms has driven occupancy rates even further down. I n both 2004 and 2005, more than half of all the areas hotel rooms were empty over the course of the year.
Its impossible for a hotel to be profitable at that rate, Mueller said. We have seen a lot of hoteliers struggling. A lot of properties are up for sale.
Nobody comes to town to stay in a hotel, she added. If our attractions are having less visitors, without question, were affected. Our bread and butter is still the resort traveler.
The city of Williamsburg receives nearly half its annual operating budget from tourism-related revenues each year. Boosted by Colonial Williamsburg and the outlet shopping nearby, it collects the highest per-capita sales tax revenues in the state.
Yet the region increasingly has looked away from tourism for economic development growth in recent years. City officials say they would like to attract more office and residential development. M any of the major projects going on in the region, such as the construction of a hospital and two large mixed-use developments, have little to do with tourism or Colonial Williamsburg.
Conventional development is way up, and itll continue to grow, said Richard Schreiber , president of the Williamsburg Area Chamber of Commerce and Convention and Visitors Bureau . Tourism will continue to be an important piece of the economy, he said, but not to the same degree it was.
Part of Williamsburgs troubles, most agree, is that the slide continued for years without anyone doing much about it.
For instance, when the region lost state funding for a tourism advertising campaign in 2000, nothing was done to replace the money. U ntil 2004, separate tourism groups and attractions never worked together to market the area.
The attendance decline had continued for five years before 2004, when representatives of the hotel association, the Visitors Bureau, Busch Gardens, Colonial Williamsburg and other attractions finally sat down together to try to turn the situation around.
Their work has led to a $2 per-night hotel room fee that is used for a regional television advertising campaign. The $3.1 million advertising effort along the East Coast has gotten much of the credit for the slight increase in tourist visits in 2005.
Meanwhile, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, which spends about $9 million a year on advertising campaigns, plans to increase its marketing budget by more than $2million , Campbell said.
We have new things to say, he said. Theres a lot going on here, a nd that message has been lost on people.
He hopes the money, along with a new program about the American Revolution the museum has never depicted the critical years between 1776 and 1783 before now will draw in more tourists, he said.
Part of the Revolutionary City program also calls for a portion of the town to be closed to nonpaying visitors for a few hours each day the first time that the f oundation has closed some of its streets and a move that might encourage more people to buy admission tickets rather than just stroll through the city for free.
That, paired with the marketing efforts and the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Jamestown settlement in 2007, has given tourism officials reason to hope yet again that Williamsburg can rebound.
I think the stars are pretty well aligned at this time, Schreiber said. We have the capacity, and we think we have a product thats worth considering. Theres an opportunity to help make this place grow again. Im sure well be able to do that.
Reach Meghan Hoyer at (757)446-2293 or meghan.hoyer@pilotonline.com
http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=99944&ran=26819
Tourists leave old Williamsburg out in the cold
Colonial Williamsburg was created in the 1920s in an effort to save the buildings and preserve the history of the city that served as the Virginia capital during the 1700s.
By MEGHAN HOYER, The Virginian-Pilot
© February 21, 2006
WILLIAMSBURG The quaint dirt roads of Colonial Williamsburg can seem empty these days.
Costumed characters still walk up and down the village lanes. Horses graze in fields near the Governors Palace. Yet the throngs of visitors have thinned in recent years. On warm days in winter, a look down Duke of Gloucester Street reveals only a smattering of guests making their way from the C olonial tavern to the shops of the hatmaker and silversmith .
It wasnt always like this in Colonial Williamsburg.
During its heyday in the 1980s, the 301-acre living history park attracted as many as 1.2 million paying visitors a year. The crowds would pack the village, filling local hotels and keeping stores and restaurants busy.
Since then, the annual paid attendance has fallen by a half million, leveling out at just more than 700,000 for the past several years.
Colonial Williamsburg is still the states top single tourist attraction, according to the Virginia Tourism Corp. , b ut the decline in attendance has hurt business and shifted the regions priorities. It has made the city of Williamsburg shift some of its focus away from tourism and caused worry for hoteliers and business owners who depend on the influx of visitors to make their living.
Hotel occupancy rates in the Williamsburg area are the lowest of any metropolitan region in Virginia, having fallen to less than 50 percent in the past two years. The city has seen a decline in businesses and overall employment in recent years, going against state trends. Colonial Williamsburg itself has had to lay off employees and close attractions to sustain its budget.
Its been a very difficult time, said Shannon Mueller, the president of the Williamsburg Hotel & Motel Association. Theres absolutely concern throughout town. The industry cannot sustain itself at current levels. The math just doesnt work.
When Colonial Williamsburg was created in the 1920s by the Rev. W.A.R. Goodwin and John D. Rockefeller Jr., the city of Williamsburg and the counties around it were quiet communities. Goodwin, rector of the Bruton Parish Church, wanted to save the old buildings and re-create the Colonial town that was the capital of Virginia throughout most of the 1700s.
From the time the first restored building opened in 1932, Goodwins vision took off, giving rise to a f oundation that is not only the citys biggest employer about 3,000 people work for Colonial Williamsburg but also the regions largest landholder. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation owns hotels, restaurants, several museums and huge tracts of undeveloped land across the region.
In the 1980s, the open-air museum, with its costumed townspeople, working craftsmen and carriage rides, was attracting on average more than 1 million people a year.
Those numbers remained fairly constant until the recession of the early 1990s, when attendance dipped to well less than a million. It continued to drop despite f oundation officials claims each year that a new attraction, marketing effort or educational program would bring visitors back to previous levels.
In recent years, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation has had to dip more heavily into its healthy endowment to make up operating budget deficits, f oundation President Colin Campbell said. He acknowledged that although the endowment was still growing because of investment returns, the f oundation couldnt continue raiding its savings to make ends meet.
The news isnt all gloomy. For the first time in five years, annual paid attendance for the Jamestown Settlement has exceeded the previous year, according to the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation. Busch Gardens Williamsburg and Water Country USA also have seen attendance increase in the p ast couple of years.
Colonial Williamsburg also saw a slight uptick in attendance last year. The historical destination drew 3,000 more paying visitors than in 2004, b ut officials acknowledge the numbers are far from what they were 20 years ago.
This place ought to be attracting substantially more people than we are today, Campbell said. Historical sites in general and this site in particular really needed to think about what todays vacationer wants.
So why arent people coming to Colonial Williamsburg?
Some of it can be chalked up to a trend away from re-created historical attractions. Living history museums nationwide Colonial Williamsburg is the biggest of a collection of museums that includes Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts and other re-created pioneer villages have seen sharp decreases in attendance in recent years.
That larger problem has alarmed museum administrators, who have worried about whether their facilities offer enough hands-on activities and whether their interpretations register with todays multicultural audience.
As far as living history sites go, is it because people are having a harder time connecting with what living history sites do? asked Lynne Belluscio, president of the Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums. I think thats what were seeing people asking themselves, 'Is that my history, And can I make that connection? Its harder to make those connections.
Belluscio also wonders if living history museums are lacking what she calls the get back in line factor the excitement that makes people jump off a roller coaster and run immediately back into line to ride again.
Colonial Williamsburg bills itself as a multiday experience and charges visitors accordingly in 2005 , an adult one-day pass cost $34. In the tourism arena, Williamsburg is going up against major attractions and activities .
As families more often choose active, adventure-filled vacations, Colonial Williamsburg has slipped off the list, some said.
The vacation dollar only goes so far, Campbell said. In the 1990s, it became clear there were increasing competitive forces, a nd the vacation dollar was increasingly not coming here. Its a tremendously competitive market now. Thats just the reality of today.
Colonial Williamsburgs decline has taken a toll across the region.
According to the city of Williamsburgs Economic Development department, the total number of businesses in Williamsburg has declined since 1998. That bucks a state growth trend. The citys employment figures are similarly headed the wrong way nearly 2,000 fewer people worked in the city in 2004 than did in 2001.
Nearly all that reduction was in the tourism industry, which has seen employee numbers drop since 1990.
Oddly, the trouble has been compounded by new businesses moving into the area. Even in the face of a tough market, several hotels have opened around Williamsburg in the p ast few years. The increase in rooms has driven occupancy rates even further down. I n both 2004 and 2005, more than half of all the areas hotel rooms were empty over the course of the year.
Its impossible for a hotel to be profitable at that rate, Mueller said. We have seen a lot of hoteliers struggling. A lot of properties are up for sale.
Nobody comes to town to stay in a hotel, she added. If our attractions are having less visitors, without question, were affected. Our bread and butter is still the resort traveler.
The city of Williamsburg receives nearly half its annual operating budget from tourism-related revenues each year. Boosted by Colonial Williamsburg and the outlet shopping nearby, it collects the highest per-capita sales tax revenues in the state.
Yet the region increasingly has looked away from tourism for economic development growth in recent years. City officials say they would like to attract more office and residential development. M any of the major projects going on in the region, such as the construction of a hospital and two large mixed-use developments, have little to do with tourism or Colonial Williamsburg.
Conventional development is way up, and itll continue to grow, said Richard Schreiber , president of the Williamsburg Area Chamber of Commerce and Convention and Visitors Bureau . Tourism will continue to be an important piece of the economy, he said, but not to the same degree it was.
Part of Williamsburgs troubles, most agree, is that the slide continued for years without anyone doing much about it.
For instance, when the region lost state funding for a tourism advertising campaign in 2000, nothing was done to replace the money. U ntil 2004, separate tourism groups and attractions never worked together to market the area.
The attendance decline had continued for five years before 2004, when representatives of the hotel association, the Visitors Bureau, Busch Gardens, Colonial Williamsburg and other attractions finally sat down together to try to turn the situation around.
Their work has led to a $2 per-night hotel room fee that is used for a regional television advertising campaign. The $3.1 million advertising effort along the East Coast has gotten much of the credit for the slight increase in tourist visits in 2005.
Meanwhile, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, which spends about $9 million a year on advertising campaigns, plans to increase its marketing budget by more than $2million , Campbell said.
We have new things to say, he said. Theres a lot going on here, a nd that message has been lost on people.
He hopes the money, along with a new program about the American Revolution the museum has never depicted the critical years between 1776 and 1783 before now will draw in more tourists, he said.
Part of the Revolutionary City program also calls for a portion of the town to be closed to nonpaying visitors for a few hours each day the first time that the f oundation has closed some of its streets and a move that might encourage more people to buy admission tickets rather than just stroll through the city for free.
That, paired with the marketing efforts and the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Jamestown settlement in 2007, has given tourism officials reason to hope yet again that Williamsburg can rebound.
I think the stars are pretty well aligned at this time, Schreiber said. We have the capacity, and we think we have a product thats worth considering. Theres an opportunity to help make this place grow again. Im sure well be able to do that.
Reach Meghan Hoyer at (757)446-2293 or meghan.hoyer@pilotonline.com
