Leisure tourism recovering in Tucson while convention travel remains low | Business

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Correlation isn’t causation as the old saying goes, but Arizona’s lowest COVID count in months is a welcome sight for the Tucson tourism industry. Local hotel rooms fill up and community events are more common – but there’s still a way before travelers to Tucson reach pre-pandemic levels, despite the city’s decent number of visitors over the last year.

“We still had a lot of people coming for recreational travel even during the pandemic,” said Dan Gibson, senior director of communications at Visit Tucson. “It never went away completely.”

Gibson said trips to Tucson would fluctuate with COVID. During times when Arizona was considered the worst hotspot for the virus in the nation and even the world, tourism understandably declined. However, with cases currently low and with many tourists piling up after more than a year of quarantine, local hotels are seeing the largest number of tourists since expressions like “social distancing” entered the public vocabulary.

“We’re really seeing a significant increase in the numbers this February and March,” Gibson said. “You move around quite a bit. This February was the first month that we’ve had a 50% occupancy rate in hotels since the pandemic started. It fluctuated between 40% and 30% depending on the month, but we’ve just hit 52% utilization. We don’t have any numbers for March yet, but all data say it will be 60% or more. There were even some hotels that were sold out for spring break. It is really remarkable that people are coming back in quite a large number. ”

However, a big draw for Tucson hotels are events and conventions, such as the annual Gem and Mineral Show. These type of events are still badly affected, with the Pima County Health Department still mandating masks and recommending reduced group sizes.

The central Tucson Gem and Mineral Show, hosted by the Tucson Gem and Mineral Society, has been canceled for 2021, but several smaller events are still held across the city. While the entire gem and mineral season can include more than 50 separate events, this year it’s about 20, with reduced capacity and fewer audiences.

“That was a real blow to our community. There’s a really big international audience, both vendors and visitors, and that’s functionally zero, ”Gibson said. “We fill a lot of hotel rooms with this type of business, and when that type of business returns, you will really see the market completely return. But until then, that’s the catch. ”

Another big hit for attendance was the University of Arizona’s 2020 school year, one with no personal homecoming or a family weekend, so changed.

“Every year when the UA’s football schedule comes out, I mark those weekends because I know I can’t get hotel rooms for journalists,” Gibson said.

Gibson, however, is optimistic that this year’s UA fall semester will return to its role as a community driver as it has been in years past. UA is already planning to start personal graduation over a one-week period in May. UA President Robert C. Robbins also announced plans to offer most courses entirely in person for the fall semester of 2021, which begins in August. These plans are in line with the national music and theater touring industry, which has local venues like the Rialto Theater and Fox Theater planning to return to live concerts this fall.

But a dominant element of the pandemic that is likely to persist in some form after the great “return to normal” is options for virtual engagement. Even typical in-person events like this year’s Tucson Folk Festival and the Gemstone Show offered online streaming opportunities.

In his work with Visit Tucson, Gibson says event organizers and hotels see high-speed WiFi for virtual engagements as one of their primary concerns.

“I think most events and conventions will have some kind of virtual element. We have proven it can be done. And when someone isn’t ready to fly or has other things ahead of them, people have that option, ”Gibson said. “There’s something very accessible about that. But if there’s a chance I’ll never zoom back in, that’s fine with me. The tiredness is real. And I think people’s wanderlust really means there is this pent-up desire to explore. I think a lot of it will come back. “

While there is still much to do, Tucson does better than similarly sized vacation markets thanks to our wide range of outdoor options, such as easy access to Saguaro National Park.

At the beginning of the year, the Marana Visitor Center was even named the official Arizona Visitor Information Center by the Arizona Office of Tourism.

“Of course, travelers’ priorities have changed over the past year and we are seeing more visitors to our propulsion markets because people are less likely to fly,” said Laura Cortelyou, Tourism and Marketing Manager for the City of Marana. “At the moment we are actually well positioned to see people who want to go to a national park and want to be outside.”

The Arizona Visitor Information Center network includes more than 50 locations across the state. According to the AOT, designated AVICs help promote local Arizona communities as well as regional and state attractions, destinations, dining and hospitality facilities.

“We outperformed places like San Francisco and Austin with the pandemic,” Gibson said. “I think that’s partly because we have so much outdoor stuff. You can have an experience here that you won’t see so many people. If you are not ready for this personal experience, you can still go on vacation here. ”

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