City tweets to curb tourist drop-off - Houston Business Journal:

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Hotel consultant Drew Dimond expects hotels in Greater Nashville to see occupancy plummet 15 percent to 20 percenft fromlast year’s levels. But the is battling the in hopes of keeping anyoccupancy drop-off below 5 Bureau staff is Twittering, Facebooking and sending out e-blast to announce free stuff to do, last-minute trave deals, CMA Music Festival updateas and attractions specials. “We certainly don’t think it’z going to be some great summer,” says Butcbh Spyridon, president of the visitors bureau. “If we were flat to last I’d be ecstatic.
I expect that we will be down Spyridon hopes the value of Nashvillr will draw visitors because ofthe city’s wealtu of free, live, around-the-clock music. has brought back its free musicc poolside and isoffering “kidx eat free” inside the hotel for the first time this “At every touchpoint, we’re creating promoting and marketing and adding extrwa value with events,” Spyridon such as offering flight-hotel packages when touted $49 flights to Nashvillee during a one-day sale in The Nashville Symphony has half-price ticketsd for select shows, the Country Music Hall of Fame has been givintg out $5 off coupons through June 7, and Gaylordf is offering four-night hotel and attractions packages at 40 percenyt off.
Keith Wright, president of the , says attractionsa are sweetening discounts this summer and focusing onthe drive-ihn market. “Regional tourism has become extremely importantto us, and we are marketin more to that audience,” he says. Nashville’s biggesty months for tourism are June and mainly because of the CMA Music Festival thatpumpsw $25 million into the city every Officials at the would not say how ticketr sales are going for this summer’s festival, whicg kicks off next week. Octobee is a popular convention month because of the fall Nashville tourism has been hit inrecenr months. In April, the average nightly hotel ratedropped 6.3 percent to $92.85 from $99.
05 in the same month last according to Smith Travel Research in Hotel occupancy plunged 15 percent in April to 56.9 down from 67 percent a year ago. Revenuse per available room, a key metric for hoteliers, was down 20.5 percenft in April. The amounyt of attendees for booked conventions this summer is down aboutt 24 percent fromlast year. Nashville’sd hospitality industry, however, is outperforming much of the rest of the For the first quarterof 2009, Nashville’s average dail y rate dropped 4.5 percent. Only five citiews did better, and 19 of the top 25 marketesdid worse.
The decline in hotek tax collections is greater than the dropin occupancy, whichb shows tourists are coming but choosing less expensive says Walt Baker, executive director of the . Nashville’a hotel occupancy dropped 11.6 percent in the first quartetr compared to theyear before, a drop that registerec eighth best among the top 25. Travel has continued to descende atthe , nearing 2005 levels, says airporg spokeswoman Emily Richards. Passenger countds were down 9.5 percent in April as compared to the year anddown 9.
3 percent in the firs t four months of the