Houston Tourism Ideas

[glorplaxy]

Originally Posted by jfre81

Riiiight. So how's Vegas doing these days?

People don't travel (or gamble) when they're unemployed and broke.

Does Vegas have the energy and medical and industrial sectors to bolster their economy in case hospitality demand goes down, like we do?

Didn't think so.

[jimmyev]

Originally Posted by jfre81

And I reiterate, the weather argument is moot. Where's the nice beach in New Orleans again? Pensacola? Har. What's the temperature in Chicago right now? In Boston? How about Montreal? And what is the weather generally like here when it's freezing there? It's not summer all the time.

Bad weather is the old scapegoat any city that fails at attracting tourists falls upon.

Originally Posted by jfre81

And I'll say it again - what's so wrong with improving the city for our own sake?

This is how it's done. You improve your city for your residents and the tourists eventually follow because it's a nice place to be. That's how Chicago and New York draw tourists. Building something touristy to attract tourists doesn't exactly work. The Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame is in Cleveland. It attracts tourists to Cleveland, but only for a day. Then they're out. And they don't come back.

Contrast that with Pittsburgh, where people come to see the Warhol or for a convention, are impressed with the city that was built for it's residents, stay awhile and eventually come back to visit again. Same thing with Fort Worth. Most people don't think of Fort Worth as being a tourist city, but if you go for the Stockyards or a convention, the city - built for it's residents - is a great place to spend some time. So you eventually want to go back and explore a little bit more.

[blkgiraffe]

Originally Posted by jfre81

But you confirm my points - that weather and lack of natural scenery are not in themselves tourist repellents.

Here's the deal - you don't manufacture character. New Orleans wasn't built overnight. Houston, comparatively speaking, was. Look at Vegas. The most devoid of character place on the face of the earth. It's not even a real city IMHO. More like a gigantic theme park in the desert. Since nothing we can do can make us like New Orleans (and we should not try to be another place) then what do you do? Become Vegas? Spare us.

We put on a nice front for the Super Bowl, didn't we? If that boondoggle train to nowhere wasn't there it would've been a traffic nightmare and we'd never sniff the Super Bowl for a long time if not ever again. Maybe we should focus on building out the transit infrastructure again. We don't need tourists for that. We have enough demand as it is.



You know anyone in New Orleans? Who lives there, I mean. Ask them when was the last time they went to Bourbon Street. (Maybe they did for the Super Bowl just to see the scene, but let's not pretend the Saints winning it all is common by any stretch.)

Life for a resident of a city is a lot different than life for a visitor of a city. Kind of like how we don't have tourists, but people are moving here in droves. In sustainable amounts at least, I'd rather have that.

So, being Mr. Positivity for a little bit, have we noticed how all of a sudden newspapers in NYC are raving about the food scene here? You don't need mountains or waterfalls or a Mediterranean climate to eat in an air-conditioned restaurant, do we? What's one of the reasons people go to New Orleans again, other than getting wasted? That's right, food. And our food scene is a bit more varied than theirs. How might we build on that?

You need to understand Houston's economy is diverse and strong enough that we'll never end up like Vegas. Tourism would only diversify our economy more; not destroy it.

[jfre81]

I'm fairly aware of what makes up our economy. And if those industries ever went down, it'll be because the whole country has gone to hell and nobody will be traveling anyway. And if they did, they still wouldn't come here. jimmyev gets it at least. Don't go out to pull them in, let them come to you.

Can anyone come up with an instance of a city with an economy of Houston's scope that fell on hard times and propped themselves up entirely on tourism? I think we're diverse enough economically. We've moved beyond merely oil; energy has its ups and downs but there will always be a market for it. Healthcare is about as stable as an industry can be, though I'm sure there's some unease about the reform debate in Washington.

But you know what, I'll humor jluke and glorplaxy here. What can we realistically do to get people to travel to Houston for leisure not just regionally but nationally? What will bring people from "the coasts" to "flyover country" - and Texas at that? What would make them spend their travel dollar here and not to New Orleans or Florida or Cancun? An amusement park? I don't buy it. Earth Quest Adventures sounds cool enough but it'll be the new Astroworld. Nobody came here from outside the region for Astroworld. It was for locals, and EQA will similarly be a regional attraction. The park is also going to be out in BFE. It'll bring in money to New Caney anyhow.

The whole gambling/red light district thing isn't a winner either. Let's not forget what state we're still part of. We'll only have legalized brothels and hash bars after everywhere else in the country does. Hell, for the blue laws you can't even buy liquor after 9pm here.

[theSUBlime]

Originally Posted by jimmyev

Bad weather is the old scapegoat any city that fails at attracting tourists falls upon.



This is how it's done. You improve your city for your residents and the tourists eventually follow because it's a nice place to be. That's how Chicago and New York draw tourists. Building something touristy to attract tourists doesn't exactly work. The Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame is in Cleveland. It attracts tourists to Cleveland, but only for a day. Then they're out. And they don't come back.

Contrast that with Pittsburgh, where people come to see the Warhol or for a convention, are impressed with the city that was built for it's residents, stay awhile and eventually come back to visit again. Same thing with Fort Worth. Most people don't think of Fort Worth as being a tourist city, but if you go for the Stockyards or a convention, the city - built for it's residents - is a great place to spend some time. So you eventually want to go back and explore a little bit more.

Actually, I believe is quite the opposite. Many of the attractions tourists are interested in, residents have no interest in and vice versa. That's why you always see "Where the Tourists Go" in tour guide books. Plus, why would I wait 2 hours to go see something that I can go see later or find some place better? When your city is "nice" you tend to take those things for granted, because while you might have fun in your city, the things that tourists are coming to see in your city are just run of the mill.

In any case, Chicago and New York have plenty of nasty places, but they have managed to create great neighborhoods around their attractions and that is key. Astroworld was in a pretty dumpy area and look what happened. The real key to tourism is making a city convenient and at the very least giving the illusion that most if not all of your city is just as nice and thus more enjoyable. What they don't know isn't going to hurt them anyway, because they're only coming to see the nice part. Houston's sparse infrastructure and poor public transportation is not conducive to such an image and that's the biggest problem.

I don't really think many people have interest in visiting Pittsburgh or Fort Worth, they're just not really of the tourist class, though they probably have done a better job at preserving their history and people are surprised at their finds. They don't have the same buzz as even Austin and 6th St, LA and Hollywood, Seattle and Pikes Place Market or New Orleans and French Quarter etc...

[susan ridi]

Waterfront resort at different lake at Houston make the area for suitable for tourism

[bfizzy]

The best way to make Houston attract more tourists would be to make the city nicer for the people who live here. People don't visit Chicago or NYC for one specific tourist attraction. They visit them because they are huge, bustling world class cities.

[theSUBlime]

Originally Posted by bfizzy

The best way to make Houston attract more tourists would be to make the city nicer for the people who live here. People don't visit Chicago or NYC for one specific tourist attraction. They visit them because they are huge, bustling world class cities.

I half agree, no they don't visit cities for one attraction, but they visit them for multiple attractions and those cities have plenty. I might visit a great bar or a beautiful house when I'm in your city, but I'm certainly not going to leave Tokyo to come visit a bar or your mansion in River Oaks. Parts of Harlem are still rough, but people still want to see it, because famous people and things happened there--not because it's the best neighborhood on earth. In other words, your city needs to have something mine doesn't. You really just need one really good thing. Disneyworld is a pretty good example. It's really a chicken or egg situation though.

[jfre81]

You know something glorplaxy, I was watching some live music in Austin last night and a guy I was talking to in the bar said he got told by the cops to quit playing on the street in Houston.

If this is the way it is, I do wonder where exactly they get off requiring a permit to play music in a public place if you are not obstructing use of that place to the rest of the public (e.g. blocking off a whole street or sidewalk). Do those wackos who holler from a podium every Saturday night in front of the Humble Tower have to get a permit too?