Courting Foreign Tourists Tourism Agencies Step Up Efforts To Attract Visitors From Overseas

As the river of international tourists that annually flood the Pacific Northwest rolls by, the Inland Northwest has but a small bucket to scoop up its share.

Tourism-related businesses would prefer to a hook a pipeline to that river of potential revenue. That won’t happen overnight. But tourism marketers and entrepreneurs are making steps to lure more of the high-spending foreign travelers.

Excluding Canadians who make the short trip south to shop and play golf, international travelers account for about 5 percent of visitors to Spokane and Kootenai counties.

That’s not bad, considering the counties’ size and location. But so many more come tantalizingly close.

Nearly half a million non-Canadian internationals visited Washington state alone last year, said Clint Hyde, travel industry marketing manager for the state tourism marketing division in Olympia.

Seattle, in particular, has had great success attracting Asian visitors. But few venture east of the Cascades, where Germans and Britons dominate the mix of international visitors.

The Spokane area’s strong German heritage and Germans’ fascination with the Western U.S. brings them here, said Martha Lou Wheatley of the Spokane Regional Convention & Visitors Bureau.

The travel habits of Germans and other Europeans also make them a better target for inland destinations like Spokane and Coeur d’Alene. With an average of six weeks of vacation each year to burn, they like to spend some time outside the neon glare of big cities.

“They like to take their time and really tour the area when they come here,” Wheatley said. “And they really enjoy quiet places - too many places in America, they say, have too much noise.”

The secret to landing more international tourists is no secret: Spend the money on marketing to them directly. It’s worked for Washington state, for Seattle and for destinations as small as Blaine, Wash.

It’s also easier written than done. Advertising in European travel magazines and attending tour agent trade shows abroad would sink the budgets at most midsized convention and visitor bureaus, including those in Spokane and Coeur d’Alene.

“It really is just incredibly expensive to do,” said Dr. John S. Hunt, head of the Resource Recreation and Tourism Department at the University of Idaho. “Smaller towns and businesses need to find partners to piggyback on with these campaigns.”

In the case of Washington state, the tourism marketers piggyback with international trade officials in London and Paris to get the word out about Washington.

Idaho has joined with Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming to form Rocky Mountain International, a tourism marketing agency. The group helps sell the four states to European tourism agents.

Establishing a long-term presence in a target market like Japan or England works, Hyde said. “You’ve got to get there at least once a year, and you’ve got to keep going back to make it work,” he said.

Aggressive marketing has worked well for the Canadian Automobile Association. The 21 CAA offices in British Columbia book many of the popular Canadian Rocky Mountain tours that attract busloads of Asian and European travelers, said Bill Bullis, president of CAA British Columbia, while at a regional AAA convention in Spokane this week.

“We market our cruises and our tours very aggressively over there and it pays off,” Bullis said.

With the popularity of Canadian Rockies tours that originate in Seattle, Spokane tourism officials hope that the city’s expanding airport can siphon some of the tour traffic.

“We really do have a good product here,” Hunt said. “It’s just a matter of getting the word out there. It’s tough to get penetration and exposure in Europe and Asia.”

Local convention bureaus can barely execute their domestic marketing plans, let alone launch ambitious international campaigns.

John Kozma at the Coeur d’Alene Convention & Visitors Bureau got a state grant to woo international tourists - a whole $3,000. The money will go for a small ad in Real America, a popular European travel journal that circulates 50,000 copies to tour operators.

“The biggest thing international travelers like about our area is the natural beauty,” Kozma said. “In their eyes, this is unspoiled land compared to what they’re used to.”

Kozma and crew will have a chance to sway 60 international tour agents in September as part of the Rocky Mountain International Roundup in Lewiston. The conference delegates will likely spend an evening in Coeur d’Alene as they make connections through Spokane’s airport.

Robert Singletary of the Coeur d’Alene bureau travels to conventions of foreign tour operators - most recently to New York - to present the region’s wares.

“We’re seeing more groups from Japan, from Taiwan and from around the world coming here,” said Singletary, surrounded by racks of pamphlets inside the Visitor Center in downtown Coeur d’Alene. “But we’re not at the point where we have enough visitors from Asia that you’ll see signs in Japanese around. We’re a long way from that level of sophistication.”

The Spokane and Coeur d’Alene visitor bureaus have taken to hosting foreign travel writers as another less expensive way to spread the word. A German writer looking to map out extensive touring routes through the Northwest said he especially enjoyed the region, Wheatley said.

Some in the tourism marketing field suggest that boosting international efforts augments interest in the area domestically.

The city of Albuquerque aggressively courted Europeans in the late 1980s and early 1990s, said Rene Montgomery, manager of convention sales for Cavanaugh’s in Spokane who recently moved from the New Mexico city to Spokane.

The new pitch toward Germans and English travelers touting the strength of Santa Fe’s Western art scene worked liked gang-busters, Montgomery said.

“They are just so interested in anything Western and especially in Native Americans,” she said. “It just worked very, very well.”

In 1988, the city was begging for any tourism business, she said. Last year, Albuquerque was No. 5 in hotel occupancy in the country.

By deeming itself an international destination, Albuquerque piqued the travel consciousness of more domestic travelers without spending more on domestic marketing, she said.

“And I think Spokane and this region has a lot more to offer than they did down there,” Montgomery said. “Our hotel properties are very well developed for a city this size, and there’s just so many more activities here than there were down there.”

Spokane developers share Montgomery’s optimism for the future of the area’s tourism economy.

Montgomery’s employer, Goodale & Barbieri Cos., bought a 20-story tower in downtown Seattle in May to expand its Cavanaugh’s network.

The building - previously the headquarters for U.S. Bank before its move to Portland - will become a 280-room hotel called Cavanaugh’s Inn on Fifth Avenue next summer.

The long-term plan is to route tourists - many of them international - from the Seattle property through Spokane as they tour the West, said Lori Farnell, marketing director for G&B in Spokane. The tourists would continue West to eventually end up at the G&B hotel in Kalispell, Mont., she said.

Cavanaugh’s current relationships with major tour operators abroad will grow with its Seattle hotel, Farnell said. That business will eventually spill back over the mountains.

Investors in Spokane’s landmark Davenport Hotel have said they would aggressively seek international tourists after renovating the hotel.

If owner Wai-Choi Ng follows through with his plans to create a five-star hotel out of the Davenport, Ng’s Pacific Rim connections will result in travel groups from Malaysia, Hong Kong and around the Far East, said Sheri Barnard, former Spokane mayor and an adviser to the Davenport.

But the Davenport project, which has been snagged in political and legal skirmishes, currently is at a near standstill.

“It’s not going to happen overnight,” Barnard said. “But I think it will happen.”

Back in Olympia, Hyde of the state tourism marketing department has seen his skepticisms about international tourism proven wrong time and time again.

“Someone asked me five years ago if we would ever see Japanese tourists here in the off-season, and I thought it would never happen,” he said. “And yet here they are today, and we’re placing them in beds and breakfasts and for whale-watching tours.”

However, the marketing budget on the state level has been cut each of the 11 years Hyde’s been there. “I fear that we’re cutting dangerously close to where we don’t get the results over the long haul.”

At the federal level, Hunt in Moscow said that tourism marketing dollars are almost certain to be axed from the budget, making it even tougher for states to reach across the oceans for visitors.

Convention bureaus here would simply prefer to have an international budget to worry about.

Until international tourism usurps the role Canadians now play in the region’s tourism economy, hosting travel writers and reaching out to foreign tour agents will have to suffice for larger marketing efforts.

“It’s a real toughie,” Hunt said. “Places like Spokane and Coeur d’Alene are just going to have to brainstorm new ideas, maybe look at some new technology like the World Wide Web to get the word out. These places just don’t have the bucks to get over there.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: BY THE NUMBERS Number of foreign visitors to Spokane Visitor Center during June and July, 1995: Africa 5 Australia 19 Austria 12 Bahamas 2 Belgium 19 Brazil 2 Bulgaria 4 Canada 1,519 Czech Rep. 2 China 2 Denmark 25 England 46 Finland 2 France 27 Germany 139 Hungary 2 Israel 10 Italy 2 Japan 8 Mexico 6 Netherlands 32 New Zealand 2 Norway 2 Poland 2 Scotland 13 Switzerland 34 Taiwan 1 Trinidad 1 Venezuela 6 Source: Spokane Convention & Visitors Bureau