It may be too soon to start singing happy days are here again, but there is no doubt this year is better than last year in the hospitality and tourism industry in the Hudson Valley.
“You guys are actually doing fantastic down there,” said Mark Dorr, communications director for the New York State Hospitality and Tourism Association, a trade group that tracks occupancy rates in lodgings statewide.
Dorr said that Westchester and the Hudson Valley are among the top three tourism regions in the state this year compared with a down year in 2009. In their statistical groupings, the Kingston-Newburgh area shows bookings up15.5 percent in January through May compared with the same period last year. Bookings in Westchester are up 13 percent. While occupancy rates are up statewide, things are much better in the Hudson Valley, said Dorr, noting occupancy rates are up an average of 8 statewide.
“We”™ve been tracking since the beginning of the year and it was an especially strong spring, and summer came early, and it seems people really felt like it was time to get out and travel,” he said. Statewide, about 75 percent of lodge owners say their bookings are up from last year.
The Hudson Valley is ideally located to take advantage of the new yen to go, because he said, trends in the hospitality industry seem to show the public taking more and shorter vacations. As the economy has started to turn around a little bit people are taking their families for what appears to be long weekends, and to do a couple of those trips,” said Dorr, adding that “hotels are doing a great job of creating packages” to meet the new demand.
“What we”™re seeing is people beginning to spend, and corporations are starting to do a little more travel,” said Kim Sinistore, director of the Westchester County Tourism office.
She said the county is seeing different types of travelers than in the past, using the travel industry term of “SMERF” denoting social groups, military personnel, education tours, religious groups and fraternal organizations making more travel arrangements than in the past.
In the past she said, Westchester bookings were almost always 65 percent business travel and 35 percent tourism and pleasure travel, but said those numbers are now trending a bit toward the pleasure side, with weddings at the county”™s numerous castles and mansions attracting wedding planners. She also noted that prices are rising again in New York City sending some business northward.
Mary Kay Vrba, Dutchess County director of tourism, said that the hospitality business is trending upward in her domain, sparked by the so-far splendid weather and linked to the many attractions the region offers.
