San Francisco tourism sector suffers as foreign visitors stay away

(27 Aug 2021) LEAD IN:
San Francisco's tourism industry is making a slow recovery from the pandemic.
The Californian city relies on international visitors and they are still in short supply.

STORY-LINE:
Cable cars ferry visitors to and from San Francisco's famed Fisherman's Wharf.
It's a hotspot for tourists, with sounds of squawking seagulls flying over Alcatraz, and smells of freshly caught seafood and sights of street performers, tour boats and countless souvenir shops selling sweaters to tourists who mistakenly thought summer in San Francisco would be warm.
But there's something missing: international visitors.
With most overseas tourists still unable to travel to the US due to ongoing COVID restrictions, San Francisco's tourist industry is suffering.
"San Francisco still to this day is not seeing any international tourists and international tourists in San Francisco account for probably close to half a million a week between Asia, South America and Europe," says Jay Altman, Manager at the Lola San Francisco store.
"In addition, we lost cruise ships every day, no cruise ships. And thirdly, there's nothing at the Moscone Center. That was 100, 150,000 people a week at conventions."
Without that foreign money, the local tourism industry is having to depend on an increase in domestic travelers to make up the difference.
National tourism ad campaigns, cheap domestic flights and hotel deals have helped.
But they are still a long way off pre-pandemic levels.
"We had over 26 million visitors in 2019, spending close to ten billion dollars for our city. So it's a huge economic driver for our city," says Hubertus Funke, Chief Tourism Officer at the San Francisco Travel Association.
"Obviously, the pandemic has caused that to derail our forecast for 2021. We're probably looking at anywhere between 15 and 16 million visitors. Obviously, the spend is going to be significantly lower as well. So we are seeing a very jagged, a very slow recovery in terms of tourism for the city."
Appealing to the domestic market helps fill the void a bit - but they don't spend anything like as much as overseas visitors.
"In a normal year, about 25 percent of our overnight visitors to the city are from international markets, but they make up for 60 to 65 percent of the overall spend," explains Funke.
US residents are seeing the advantages of vacationing closer to home.
"I think it's easier to travel domestically right now because I know different countries have different rules and I think I definitely wouldn't want to sit on, to go to Europe or something like that, super long flight or anything like that," says Jadian Warren, who has traveled here from Florida.
"Tickets are really cheap right now, I think a round trip, you pay 130 bucks, which is really cheaper than what we spend on gas to get here from the airport," says Aakash Beesabathuni, from Michigan.
But businesses like Blazing Saddles, which offers bike rentals to ride across the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, say they need customers from Europe and Asia who often prefer that mode of transportation to cruise around the city by the bay.
"Our business will not be sustainable unless we have international travel open back up again," says Jeff Sears, who owns Blazing Saddles.
To make matters worse, there are currently no cruise ships docking in the city and business convention bookings remain sluggish.
City officials and business leaders continue to petition the US government to open up borders to international visitors.
"So we really look forward to the negotiations that are going on and being able to get the borders open as soon as possible."

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