THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 26, 1996 TAG: 9605260047
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 60 lines
Virginia Beach pays $15,000 a year to find out how far its multimillion-dollar investment in the tourism industry goes.
Tourism is a business like any other in Virginia Beach, just harder to pin down, said Old Dominion University professor Gilbert R. Yochum, co-author of the second annual study. His analysis helps put the industry on the same footing as the Ford plant, Yochum said.
``We're literally giving shape and form to the factory,'' he said.
To figure out how much the city spends on its tourists, Yochum and co-author Vinod B. Agarwal get city departments to itemize their expenditures on tourism.
For the police department, it's the cost of 60 officers, four boats, three all-terrain vehicles, five motorcycles and 11 cars. The Fire Department adds up the cost of two engines, a salvage truck, a utility truck and 33 firefighters detailed to the resort district. Lifeguards are counted, as is beach replenishment, trash disposal, and bond payments for the Atlantic Avenue beautification project, Yochum said.
All those expenditures added up to $21.8 million last year. (Yochum said he didn't include the amphitheater or the Virginia Marine Science Museum in his calculations because residents will use them as much or more than tourists).
The revenue side of the equation is even trickier to calculate, Yochum said, because he has to figure out how many tourists visited Virginia Beach in a year.
It's fairly easy to count the number of hotel rooms that were filled each night - thanks to an ODU occupancy study - but not all rooms have the same number of people staying in them, and not everyone stays in a hotel.
Yochum uses survey data, collected four times a year, to estimate the information for hotels, and conducts his own survey of campgrounds. He has help from real estate agents to learn how many people stay in rental homes. By knowing the cost of room rentals, the party size and the visitors' length of stay, Yochum can derive about how much they spent.
Once he has that, he uses another survey to figure out how much tourists spend on food and souvenirs.
Yochum said his numbers are as good as they can be, but they are still estimates and best guesses. ``No statistics ever hit the bull's eye,'' he said. ``They hit the target.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
CASH IN, CASH OUT
Direct city revenue from tourism 1995:
$22.6 million - sales tax
$7.4 million - property tax
$5.7 million - fees such as parking and trash pickup, and revenue
from the Pavilion and visitors center.
Direct city expenditures for tourism 1995:
$8.1 million - convention/visitor development
$5.7 million - capital improvements
$4.3 million - police, fire, lifeguards
$3.7 million - trash pickup, beach replenishment and beach
cleaning
1995 Virginia Beach Tourism Economic Impact Study
KEYWORDS: TOURISM VIRGINIA BEACH STATISTICS by CNB