Visitors bureau looks out for inns

Alicia Robinson

Local hotels wish they had the same problem as the spot in Bethlehem

where Mary and Joseph tried to stay -- no room at the inn.

A $25,000 campaign, launched last month by the Newport Beach

Conference and Visitors Bureau, aims to boost winter reservations at

the city’s small inns and hotels. The bureau is targeting driving

travelers by running ads for six months in American Automobile

Assn.’s “Westways” magazine, and some of the inns are offering

special deals on rooms.

“It’s kind of a grass-roots campaign,” bureau executive director

Marta Hayden said. “Advertising dollars are tight for everyone, so

[the inn owners] asked if they could have an advertising campaign

specifically for them.... Any time starting after the fall season

into the spring is kind of an area where we could all use a few extra

reservations.”

The city’s eight inns vary in size and style, from the Doryman’s

Oceanfront Inn -- a lavishly decorated, 11-room bed and breakfast --

to chain establishments such as the 62-room Holiday Inn Express.

Big-name hotels, like the Four Seasons and Hyatt Newporter, can

book large groups and have bigger advertising budgets, but the inns

don’t have those advantages, said Brion Amendt, general manager of

the Newport Channel Inn.

“We have a hard time trying to get everyone full,” he said. “This

is an important thing to kind of band together and have a promotion

for the small inns. There’s always lots of promotion for the large

hotels.”

The 30-room Newport Channel Inn is typically about 65% full

through the winter, compared with a 90% to 100% occupancy rate in the

summer months, Amendt said.

City statistics for bed taxes -- a 10% tax on top of the room rate

-- illustrate that point. Large and small lodgings and vacation

rentals brought in nearly $10 million in bed taxes in the fiscal year

running from July 2003 to June 2004. Nearly 60% of that total came in

during the July to September and April to June quarters.

While Amendt said it’s too early to measure results, Hayden noted

the conference and visitors bureau website has had more than 1,500

hits since it posted an ad for the inns. They expect room bookings to

accompany upcoming events such as the Newport Harbor Boat Parade and

the Rose Bowl football game in Pasadena.

As an incentive, the Newport Channel Inn is offering free tickets

for harbor cruises to people who book rooms through the bureau

website or mention the AAA ad.

Hayden hopes to track the success of the promotion, but the bureau

and the inn operators won’t be the only ones watching the results.

The bureau pitched the inn campaign as one thing it would be able

to do with a bigger cut of the bed tax, which the City Council

granted in February.

* ALICIA ROBINSON covers business, politics and the environment.

She may be reached at (714) 966-4626 or by e-mail at

[email protected].