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Area tourism rises, attraction visitors decline
By Kathleen Dayton
Staff Writer
Try to book a hotel room in Charleston at the last minute and you will be reminded quickly that tourism is the area’s No. 1 industry.
While hotels, restaurants and retailers continue to reap the bounty of a thriving tourist economy, visitation at the area’s paid attractions has gone flat in recent years as more attractions vie for the visitor’s time and money. Some area attractions have even seen visitation decline.
An analysis of visitorship at area paid attractions, published in 2005 by the Hospitality and Tourism Management Program at the School of Business at the College of Charleston, revealed a steady increase in area visitors but a decline in visitorship at 13 area attractions. The attractions had more than 1.28 million visitors in 1997 and less than 1.16 million visitors in 2003. In the same time period, the number of tourists visiting the area went from 3.2 million in 1997 to 4.6 million in 2003.
So if they are not visiting area attractions, what are the Lowcountry’s tourists doing?
Some guess they are spending most of their time eating and shopping.
“Charleston is not just about historic sites any more. People come here just to dine,” said Valerie Perry, associate director of museums for the Historic Charleston Foundation. “Who would have thought that? Charleston on the whole is offering so much more to its paying guests.”
Perry said the area’s house museums and other historic sites are trying to offer more creative programming to entice visitors.
At Middleton Place plantation, visitors can see how rice is grown or can book a wedding or corporate event in the formal gardens.
Pat Kennedy, vice president of marketing for Middleton Place, said visitation isn’t declining but has been a little flat.
“It hasn’t gotten any worse, but it hasn’t gotten any better,” Kennedy said. “We’ve done better at picking up extra business like evening group business and weddings and other events, which is what helps.”
Kitty Robinson, executive director of the Historic Charleston Foundation, said the organization is satisfied with visitation at its house museums even though they are not the numbers the attractions experienced in the 1990s.
“In the past decade, instead of increasing, our visitation has declined, yet not to a number that we have found disturbing,” Robinson said. “We certainly do have the capacity for more visitors and would enjoy more visitors.”
The Nathaniel Russell House had 50,151 visitors last year compared to 63,184 people who visited in 2003, Perry said. The Aiken-Rhett House had 25,708 visitors in 2003 and 23,222 visitors last year.
While ticket sales at historic sites have begun to lag, there is at least one paid attraction where visitation hasn’t stalled. Joyce Lowe, director of sales and marketing for Fort Sumter Tours, said 2007 sales have increased 4% so far over 2006.
“They say Fort Sumter is kind of an iconic attraction. People will go again and again,” Lowe said.
John Crotts, professor of hospitality and tourism management at the College of Charleston, said the average tourist is in Charleston for only three nights, so paid and free attractions alike must compete for the visitor’s time-crunched holiday.
“We found out, too, that really downtown Charleston, particularly King Street, is an attraction in and of itself and it’s for free, so you’re not only competing against somebody’s discretionary income and what they budget, you’re also competing for their time,” Crotts said.
Taylor Nelson, director of Magnolia Plantation and Gardens, said greater competition for a visitor’s time is indeed one of the main factors challenging area attractions.
“We focus on providing people with a broad experience, and that’s been one of our strategies, to have a place that can be interesting not only to garden lovers but to families,” Nelson said. “Our visitation has probably improved slightly each year.”
John Brumgardt, director of the Charleston Museum, said he has noticed an overall decline in visits to local historic sites and museums since the 1990s.
“You come into the area and there is just a plethora of things to do,” Brumgardt said. “The focus on individual things just doesn’t have the focus it once had.”
George McDaniel, executive director of Drayton Hall, said the issue of flat or declining visitation at historic sites is a national trend and not something unique to Charleston.
“Monticello is a good example,” McDaniel said. “This isn’t just a Charleston problem. There are so many more things to do in regard to leisure time now. I think shopping is the number one leisure activity now. So historic sites are competing with non-traditional type competitors, whereas before the competition was more or less among the historic sites. Now, it’s shopping, dining and just walking around downtown.”
While admissions to historic sites are rising, expenses go up every year, McDaniel said.
“I think it is really critical that the tourism industry in Charleston supports these historic sites because we do so much beyond tours,” he said. “We do a lot with school programs that enrich the educational experience for students in ways a classroom cannot. We’re also deeply engaged in preservation activities in downtown Charleston and on Ashley River Road. When our visitation is flat or declining, there are negative consequences.”
The Charleston Area Convention and Visitors Bureau wants to change that, said deputy director Perrin Lawson.
“For the last several years, we have been doing a lot of marketing designed specifically to address that, but the fact is that attendance at attractions, particularly at historic attractions, remains a challenge,” Lawson said.
He attributes part of the decline to changing wants and desires from the traveling public.
“They want things to be a lot more hands-on, and a lot of times that’s difficult to do with historic attractions,” Lawson said. “Attractions locally have tried to address that and introduce new programs. The plantations have a number of African-American programs that have done well.”
The Lowcountry’s historic sites and other paid tourist venues are looking for creative ways to reinvent their attractions in order to lure not only the first-time visitor but the repeat visitor to Charleston.
The College of Charleston’s report on paid attraction visitorship revealed that 55% of tourists surveyed were repeat visitors.
“One of the challenges is to encourage people to maybe see an attraction they have seen before and make them understand there are different programs and things they can see that they did not see before,” Lawson said.
An example of how a longtime attraction can freshen its appeal, he said, is the new Congressional Medal of Honor Museum scheduled to open May 25 at Patriots Point, home of the USS Yorktown.
“That museum had been at the Yorktown for a number of years, but it has been fairly static and they’ve always wanted to do a lot more with it,” Lawson said. “From the sneak previews I’ve seen, it’s going to be a big hit.”
Kathleen Dayton is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at kdayton@charlestonbusiness.com.
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