The beaches and Mission Bay are scenic playgrounds that are vastly important in selling the values of San Diego as an attractive vacation city. Joe Terzi, president and CEO of the San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau (ConVis), stressed this in a recent conversation. “Despite the rising cost of gasoline, San Diego still offers the best location for easy and less-expensive travel,” he said.\u00a0 He said the lure of the beaches is important to visitors from\u00a0Arizona, Nevada, Utah and other sections of California. A survey of prospective vacationers was taken in Seattle about people\u2019s choice for travel \u2014 and San Diego was listed No 2, ranking only behind Hawaii.\u00a0 \u00a0 “Now that\u2019s not bad, being second to what most people regard as the dream vacation to the islands,” Terzi said. “We\u2019re easier to get to and it\u2019s cheaper. I\u2019d say San Diego has the best weather in the world. I haven\u2019t found a place that has better weather 365 days of the year.” In 2008, when the country in general faced a recession and rising gas prices, San Diego\u2019s attractions didn\u2019t take a major hit. \u00a0 “We didn\u2019t see a problem for those who came to visit for a few days,” he said.\u00a0“The additional \u2026 gas cost didn\u2019t seem to matter.” \u00a0 Terzi added, though, that an increase in airline travel costs remains a concern. Krissi Kapich, vice president of marketing at ConVis, said the bureau is running a major partnership with SeaWorld San Diego by “sharing media expenses. The campaigns include Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City.” \u00a0 “We do special promotions, mostly through the online travel agencies, that offer special values or price discounts,” Kapich said.\u00a0“These promotions often target travelers who are researching popular flying destinations such as Hawaii and other key competitors.”\u00a0 ConVis spends $6.2 million from February\u00a0through June promoting the entire county. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 “The beauty and\u00a0diversity of the area are chief reasons why people come to San Diego,” said\u00a0Kapich.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 *** Classic observations \u2014<\/b> We now understand what director Martha Schumacker meant when she said it may be more difficult to gain entry into the Crew Classic next year. The annual rowing competition had 106 races involving 4,000 athletes over two days. That\u2019s hardly enough daylight to get them all in. And the feature attractions \u2014 the women\u2019s Whittier Cup and the men\u2019s Copley Cup \u2014 were foreign affairs to some degree. The victorious Harvard men had two Englishmen, a pair of New Zealanders,\u00a0an Australian and a Scot among the eight oarsmen and coxswain.\u00a0USC\u2019s triumphant ladies filled the boat with three ladies from Poland, two from Sweden and one each from Latvia and Serbia.\u00a0That left two from our side of the big pond.\u00a0 And there are even more on the big roster. That\u2019s really serious overseas recruiting.\u00a0 Crimson coach Harry Parker, considered a living legend of the sport, watched his men rally to beat a strong UC Berkeley team.\u00a0 Although it is much too early, it would appear Harvard has a great chance to win the nationals this year. It finished second to the University of Washington last year. During his 40 years as head coach, his teams have garnered six national titles, 15 undefeated seasons, 17 Eastern Sprints Championships and a 31-6 record against Yale. The sometimes-overlooked but as-important Grand Valley State University held off Notre Dame to win the men\u2019s Cal Cup and Duke, making its first appearance since 2002, when it beat Oregon State in the women\u2019s Cal Cup. \u2014 Johnny McDonald is a longtime writer and columnist for the San Diego Community Newspaper Group. He can be reached at Johnny23@cox.net.<\/i><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The beaches and Mission Bay are scenic playgrounds that are vastly important in selling the values of San Diego as an attractive vacation city. Joe Terzi, president and CEO of the San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau (ConVis), stressed this in a recent conversation. “Despite the rising cost of gasoline, San Diego still offers the […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"ON THE WATERFRONT: Seizing on San Diego\u2019s assets, tourism luring power","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559,11593,11552],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beach-bay-press","category-no-images","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298317\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}