It’s up to you, New Yo
NEW YOR
By Norman Martin
K
NEW MEXICO DEPARTMENT OF TOURISM, JIM STEIN
rk,
S
tart spreading the news.
You’re leaving today. You
know you want to be a part of
it, New Mexico, New Mexico. Yes,
New York, the city that never
sleeps, is getting a wake-up call to
come on down to the Land of
Enchantment.
In the crammed, shoulder-toshoulder world of the city, where
crowds spill onto the sidewalk and
cars clog Midtown, New Mexico has
the staggering allure of an oasis of
calm open space. More and more
New Yorkers are packing their bags
for vacations in New Mexico.
“Many of our attractions are rural
or isolated, and that’s part of the
unique beauty of New Mexico,” says
Janet Green, interim head of NMSU’s
hotel, restaurant and tourism management department. “The fact that
people have to drive through all this
scenic beauty is actually a benefit as
opposed to a drawback.”
There are signs of change aimed
at making this happen. Earlier this
year, New Mexico tourism officials
plastered a 14-by-70-foot billboard
over Times Square, New York’s own
fun, funky tourist mecca. And flipping through the tony pages of The
New Yorker magazine this spring,
high-octane readers were greeted
with “Sojourns in the Sun,” a special eight-page advertising section
promoting New Mexico tourism.
In the piece, city dwellers were
advised to recharge their batteries by
“watching a wild coyote amble up a
dry arroyo or simply sitting with a
cerveza in a lawn chair as red-soaked
sky drifts slowly into night.”
Tourism—one of New Mexico’s
most important moneymakers—has a
number of attractions favoring a rise
in new, out-of-state visitors, whether
they’re from the Big Apple or across
the state line in Abilene. State
tourism officials believe that New
Mexico offers the value, variety and
seclusion that can make the state a
prime destination for visitors weary
of high prices and shuffling crowds.
With six of the seven world climate zones in New Mexico, the
state’s diversity is a huge asset. And
New Mexico has everything that
can be called hot in tourism today,
including adventure/outdoor travel,
ecotourism, historic travel, the arts,
romantic getaways, culinary tours
and budget travel. A full itinerary is
in store for everyone from baby
boomers to families with children.
“Tourism is New Mexico’s secondlargest private sector employer, a $3.7
billion industry,” says Green, who
previously served as New Mexico
Tourism Department secretary.
The majority of New Mexico visitors
come from 10 states: Arizona,
California, Colorado, Connecticut,
Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, New York,
Texas and Washington.
Even with the national economic
downturn, the travel and tourism
industry is one of the shining stars of
the U.S. economy’s service sector,
generating $525 billion in revenue in
NM RESOURCES
3
NEW MEXICO DEPARTMENT OF TOURISM
2002, says William Norman, who
heads the Washington-based Travel
Industry Association of America
(TIA). With an annual payroll of
$174 billion, travel and tourism
employ one in every seven people in
the U.S. civilian labor force.
For years, state tourism officials
marketed New Mexico as a place that
offers spiritual refreshment under its
“Essence of Enchantment” advertising campaign. Now, more emphasis
is on identifying niche markets and
creating new ways to appeal to
tourists who want to shop or enjoy
the outdoors or cultural attractions,
says New Mexico Tourism Secretary
Fred Peralta. Having served as mayor
of Taos from 1994 until earlier this
year, he knows firsthand how important tourism is to the state’s local
economies.
New Mexico tourism peaked at
12 million visitors in 1995, but
gradually declined until bottoming
out at 9.7 million visitors in 2000,
Peralta says. The valley didn’t last
long. Last year marked the state’s
best performance in years with 11.6
million visitors.
Tourism means jobs, too.
According to Mark Boyd, an
economist with the New Mexico
Department of Labor’s Economic
Research and Analysis Bureau,
employment in the state’s accommodation and food services sector
jumped from 53,700 in 1990 to
4
FALL 2003
71,900 last year, an increase of
more than 25 percent. “Tourism
seems to be doing reasonably well,”
he says.
The challenge now is to make
people more aware of the state’s
attractions, so that they keep coming
back and visiting more places, Peralta
says. He wants to boost tourism from
the so-called drive market within 800
miles of New Mexico and, at the
same time, attract more international
travelers who tend to stay longer and
spend more money.
The $80,000, three-panel billboard in Times Square kicked off
the state’s new campaign to lure distant visitors earlier this year. The
panoramic ad featured a New
Mexican landscape with the words
“Come visit New Mexico, the Land
of Enchantment,” along with a picture of Gov. Bill Richardson.
New York is a key tourism
recruiting area for New Mexico, says
Jon Hendry, state tourism marketing
director. New Yorkers spend a lot of
money and often buy big-ticket art
works on their visits. Remember,
the biggest art market in the United
States is New York, the second is
Santa Fe, Hendry says. Research
clearly shows that a lot of people
come from New York to Santa Fe to
buy art and spend money, he adds.
As for the big billboard, it’s just
the first step in a more aggressive
recruiting strategy by the state,
Hendry says. Plans are underway to
send a New Mexico mariachi band
to Chicago’s international polka festival this fall.
“We’re trying to reach into these
major markets,” Hendry says. “The
number of people who would come
to New Mexico as a percentage of
the entire New York market is relatively small, but the market is so
big. It’s low-hanging fruit to go after
cities like New York, Los Angeles
and Dallas.”
To spark attraction between the
Land of Enchantment and offshore
travelers, the state is trying to entice
international tour operators who
specialize in packaged or customized
multiday tours, and tourism suppliers, such as hotels, restaurants and
convention bureaus.
The Albuquerque Convention and
Visitors’ Bureau already has several
initiatives underway in England. One
program, known as “Native Trails,”
takes tour visitors to Albuquerque,
Acoma, Farmington, Mesa Verde
National Park and Santa Fe. Another
effort, called “Balloons and Boots,”
offers international tourists three days
at the Albuquerque International
Balloon Fiesta and another three
days at the Lincoln County Cowboy
Symposium in Ruidoso. The tours
are promoted in six brochures available for English tour operators.
International tourism is not necessarily a strong market for New
Reaching out: Earlier this year, New
Mexico tourism was featured on a
14-by-70-foot billboard, left, in New
York’s Times Square. The massive
three-panel ad was part of a new
campaign aimed at attracting urban
visitors to the Land of Enchantment.
Janet Green, below, interim head of
NMSU’s hotel, restaurant and tourism
management department, says New
Mexico offers a calm, unique beauty
that is sought out among those in
packed metropolitan centers.
Mexico, concedes Leary O’Gorman,
vice president of tourism for the
Albuquerque bureau, but it’s definitely a growing market. “It has
almost doubled over the last year,”
he says. “New Mexico is a destination for seasoned travelers. They’re
looking for the experience.”
Earlier this year, a group of 80
international tour operators from 16
countries—including Argentina,
Germany, Mexico and the United
Kingdom—met with about 30 New
Mexico businesses and tourism organizations, including convention and
visitors’ bureaus from Albuquerque,
Las Cruces and Santa Fe, and New
Mexico Heritage Hotels, the Santa Fe
Opera and Taos Ski Valley.
The hope is to be put on their
itinerary for package tours, says
Darlene Griego, executive director of
the Santa Fe Convention and
Visitors’ Bureau. “We market the
destination as a whole, but one segment of our marketing plan is culture and arts,” she
says. In an effort to
improve tourism flow
and efficiency, Santa
Fe this year implemented a comprehensive plan dividing the
city into cultural arts
districts. The plan will
also be used as an economic development
tool, she says.
In addition, several
New Mexico cities
reach out to international travelers
through attendance at
TIA’s International
Pow Wow, a major
showcase of U.S. destinations for international buyers and
media, says Chris
Faivre, communications director for the
Las Cruces Convention and Visitors’
Bureau. “Every year, we also have a
sales mission to the city of Chihuahua (Mexico) to meet with tour
operators and travel agents in that
market to recruit people to New
Mexico,” he says.
Another strategy lies in developing new products and working with
tribal governments. “Cultural
tourism is definitely the hot button
for the European traveler,” says
Helen Marano, Office of Travel and
Tourism Industries director at the
U.S. Department of Commerce in
Washington, D.C. Few other states
can boast of New Mexico’s level of
cultural and historic preservation.
Now, 12 of New Mexico’s 22
tribes have expanded their tourism
footprint, going with gambling and
adding casinos, hotels and restaurants to bring revenues to the tribes.
Since 1999, New Mexico’s Indian
tribes have invested more than
$500 million in new casinos, hotels,
concert venues, bowling alleys and
golf courses, and more are planned.
“There’s been significant development,” says Frank Chaves, New
Mexico Indian Gaming Association
chairman. “Now we can offer topname entertainers and sporting
activities, and there’s a tremendous
potential for drawing out-of-state
visitors to New Mexico. We need to
turn our attention toward development of new markets.”
NM RESOURCES
5
NEW MEXICO DEPARTMENT OF TOURISM, MARK NOHL
Roswell area. “He felt he
had been abducted and was
here looking for answers,”
she says.
The origin of Roswell’s
popularity stems from a July
1947 incident in which a
rancher near Roswell
claimed to have found
remains of a crashed flying
saucer and turned it over to
the government. Shuster
says more than 205,000 visitors landed in Roswell last
year, where alien eyes on
lampposts greet them and a
30-foot, blow-up alien waves
from a local car dealer.
“Every day, people come
from 31 different states and
eight different countries on
average,” she says. “Last
December, we had 12 people
Tempting tourists: Distant domestic travelers
from Russia.”
and international visitors alike are drawn to
Roswell also hosts a threeNew Mexico’s eclectic mix of attractions. From
day annual UFO Festival in
the ancient communities of Native Americans
July, celebrating the purportto out-of-this-world sites in Roswell, the state is
ed crash. Among the higha magnet for experienced sightseers.
lights are lots of neon green
alien doodads, posters and
There is one tourist trump card
alien artifacts, in addition to a blackthat few, if any, states can match:
light space art show.
Roswell. Whether it was an alienBut there are some dark notes to
powered spaceship, weather balloon
the state’s tourism outlook: New
or secret government experiment
Mexico could use more and better
gone awry that plopped down in
airline service. About 30 percent of
the scrub brush of eastern New
the tourists coming into New
Mexico more than 50 years ago, the
Mexico are fly-drive customers. Most
Roswell phenomenon has put this
of these visitors make Albuquerque’s
community of 45,000 on the interInternational Sunport their
galactic map. Truth-seekers from
first stop, and some arrive
across the globe continue to look
in El Paso, which is a
for answers or at least a cool T-shirt.
gateway airport for
“We’re a tourism industry by
southern New Mexico.
chance, not by design,” says Julie
“One attribute that
Shuster, International UFO Museum
would improve the
and Research Center director.
state’s tourism indus“Everybody around the world hears
try is more direct
of Roswell, and they’re curious
flights into the state,”
about it.” For instance, earlier this
says NMSU’s Green.
year a man on holiday from
“People don’t like to
Australia spent a week in the
puddle-jump to attractions.
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FALL 2003
NEW MEXICO DEPARTMENT OF TOURISM
They like to get on a plane and arrive
at their destination.”
Tourists who come by air tend to
spend more money than those who
arrive by car, adds Art Bouffard, president of the New Mexico Lodging
Association. But because of the Sept.
11, 2001, tragedy and subsequent
fears about flying, travelers from distant destinations aren’t coming to
New Mexico in the number they did
historically, he says. Coupled with
that reduction has been a dip in airline business travelers, who tend to
spend two to three times more than
leisure visitors. “We need to reduce
this fear of flying,” he says.
Still, whether visitors fly or drive,
they discover a unique mix of cultural, creative and recreational activities that are unlike those offered in
any other state. In addition to New
Mexico’s main attractions, there are
amazing, out-of-the-way sites
throughout the state. “We have a
huge opportunity, especially in our
rural areas, to package attractions
and sell theme tours,” Green says.
Although smaller communities
may not have large marketing
resources, a smaller city can compete
by using state resources and its own
community to develop a clear image,
adds Jeff Warr, vice president of
Zachry Associates, a marketing firm
in Dallas. “The No. 1 target is your
own community,” he says. “You have
to get the community to understand
what you say you deliver. Then,
everybody says, ‘Yeah, here’s
who we are.’” That way, it
won’t just be New
Yorkers who are getting to be a part of it. R