An Average Year Slow Start, New Rooms Hurt Tourist Industry

Though late summer toursim picked up in the Inland Northwest, spring flooding and a flood of new hotel rooms along the I-90 corridor affected the business.

An additional 326 rooms have been added along I-90 this season, stretching from the Spokane Valley to Coeur d’Alene. A new 105-room Best Western opened in the Spokane Valley in May, joining a new Holiday Inn Express added to the mix last fall. In June a 118-room AmeriTel Inn opened in Coeur d’Alene.

“This has been an average year,” said Ken Schueman, owner of the Super 8 Motel in Kellogg.

“(The number of) travelers may have picked up (later this summer), but there’s just a lot more rooms available,” he said.

Robert Templin, owner of Templin’s Resort Hotel in Post Falls, agrees. The additional rooms likely cut into everyone’s market, but the slow start was a bigger problem, he said.

“Through June it was very flat. July was barely equal to last year, and August slightly exceeded last year,” Templin said.

Along with more hotel rooms, fewer Canadians visited this summer, the weather was colder and national park attendance was down this season, he said.

Jonathan Coe of the Sandpoint Chamber of Commerce said this summer’s tourism season in the Sandpoint area did not quite measure up to recent years. “Things started slowly because of spring flooding,” Coe said, adding “we did catch up in July and August.”

The Spokane Valley did well on visitor counts, with the Spokane Valley Mall’s opening and the Subud World Congress meeting in August, hoteliers say.

“We didn’t do too bad,” said Albert Garnett, general manager of the recently opened Best Western on East Mission. “We’re pretty happy (with the summer season).”

But, he echoed others’ sentiments. “With all the hotels coming into the area, it does cut into everyone’s market,” he said.

Still, the cooler and wetter weather wasn’t a complete wash-out for the tourism industry.

Despite more rain days than last year, Silverwood Theme Park in Athol celebrated its 2 millionth customer this season and has had a good late summer, said marketing director David Palmer.

“The year isn’t over, but thus far, it’s been good,” Palmer said.

And visitor numbers have been good for Spokane and the Spokane Valley. The area’s lodging tax revenues were higher this August - $769,412, vs. $722,202 last August.

Hotel bills in North Idaho in July totaled $5 million, a slight decrease from the $5.2 million in July 1996.

Some say hotel receipts are down because national park attendance is down this year. Visitors traveling to regional attractions such as Glacier National Park or Olympic National Park often come through the Spokane-Coeur d’Alene area, spending dollars locally for lodging and other items.

Visits to national parks, including Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and Olympic have decreased this year by 10 to 15 percent, said National Park Service spokesman David Barna.

“We really think those big parks get foreign visitors, and international visits are down all over,” he said.

High water from spring floods also cut short the boating season.

At the Yacht Club on Blackwell Island at Lake Coeur d’Alene, for example, business was down about 20 percent, said parts manager Brian Casey.

A month of no-wake zones on the lake this spring dampened most boaters’ hopes of a good summer, he said.

“It was just that people thought it would be a short season,” he said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo