Group Expands Education Program,
Resumes Industry Confab
The Orange County Tourism Council is back from a year-long makeover.
The Council, formed in 1996 by the Orange County Business Council, lost its funding in 1999 and in 2000 its first executive director, Bruce Brown, who retired last year.
As a result, officials spent the past year reinventing the council. The group now is a non-profit corporation and moved from the Business Council offices in Irvine to new offices at California State University, Fullerton. And the council found a new executive director in Mark Feary, a retired 30-year Disneyland executive who came on board late last year.
Meanwhile, members of the council worked with Cal State Fullerton to develop a six-course program in entertainment and tourism, which launched last fall under the temporary direction of Dr. Cynthia King from the university’s communications department.
Fifty students signed up for the first classes; this semester, four classes were added and more than 150 students are enrolled in one or more classes, with about a third of them declaring the field a major.
Now the 5-year-old Tourism Council is planning to revive a half-day tourism conference held from 1997 to 1999. The latest event is scheduled for June 21 at South Coast Repertory Theater in Costa Mesa.
Feary said the conference is set to include speakers on partnership marketing and e-commerce as well as a panel discussion on hot topics like transportation and energy.
The conference also will serve as a membership drive, Feary said.
In other action, the Tourism Council is teaming with area convention and visitor bureaus to urge county supervisors to continue funding the Visitor Marketing Consortium,a collaborative marketing effort of six visitor and convention bureaus funded by a $750,000 grant from the county in each of the past three years to promote tourism OC (see related story, page 28).
“That was the first time the county stepped forward to be involved with any tourism marketing,” said Charles Ahlers, president of the Anaheim/Orange County Visitor and Convention Bureau, which coordinated the spending.
Feary said the funding helps smaller entities without big ad budgets,like the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana and Mission San Juan in San Juan Capistrano,to attract visitors.
Last year, 40 million people visited Orange County, the first time the county crossed that threshold.
Ahlers said the consortium is hoping to expand its marketing efforts to Western Canada and Mexico if the funds are renewed.
But the bottom line, Ahlers said, is that things aren’t as rosy here as they were a year ago,particularly as a result of the ongoing energy problems.
“Anything we can do to offset that is to our advantage,” he said. “There are 160,000 tourism jobs here. A lot is at stake.” n
