While many area residents are busy exploring the sandy beaches of Cape Cod or staying at their secluded weekend homes during their summer vacation days, the owners and employees of Westchester”™s tourist attractions are busy trying to reel in a temporarily shrunken customer base.
Tourism, though a $1.7 billion industry in Westchester County, reaches its nadir during the summer months, according to tourism and hospitality officials. Many of the county”™s 53 hotels that normally thrive on corporate clientele in the other three seasons see a major drop in bookings between June and late August. The county”™s attractions generally lend themselves more to a fall crowd, and some experience their lowest turnouts during the summer.
During the spring months, nearly 15,000 visitors head to North Salem to see Old Salem Farm”™s annual horse shows, and two of the county”™s most popular attractions, Sleepy Hollow and Kykuit, the John D. Rockefeller estate in Pocantico Hills, thrive during the fall.
- The Hyatt Place hotel in the Cross County Shopping Center in Yonkers will hold its grand opening June 16.
The Katonah Museum of Art, which hosts 45,000 visitors a year, sees attendance sag in the summer. Its busiest time, Executive Director Darsie Alexander said, coincides with the school year, when field trips account for a significant portion of visitors.
To combat the lull in foot traffic during the summer, Alexander said the museum is hosting an exhibit featuring collections from five self-taught artists from the William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation in July. The museum is also involved in the Katonah Chamber of Commerce and has collaborated with the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville to promote day trips to Westchester.
“The message here is not only will the museum continue to have great programs during the summer, but we”™re also conscious of being part of a network of activities,” Alexander said. “We really want to push people to come to Westchester not just for this one institution.”
In response to the decline in tourist activity, Westchester hotels often will lower their rates and offer special packages, said Westchester Marriott General Manager Dan Conte, who also serves as president of the Westchester Hotel Association. Hotel occupancy in the county remained steady at about 69 percent in 2012 and 2013, according to Smith Travel Research.
Conte said the county is often a day-trip rather than an overnight destination for visitors. “No one is going to come here and visit for a week,” Conte said. “That”™s not what our target audience is.”
The target clientele, he said, includes wedding and bar and bat mitzvah guests and business travelers, who together make up the bulk of visitor spending in the county, which was $1.68 billion in 2013, according to Empire State Development, the state”™s chief economic development agency.
The county”™s attractions are promoted by Westchester County Tourism & Film, a division of the county”™s Office of Economic Development that is funded entirely by a portion of the county hotel occupancy tax. Its director, Natasha Caputo, said it can be a challenge promoting Westchester County as a tourist destination when the world”™s most populous city ”” filled with world-class museums, restaurants and historic landmarks ”” is just a few miles down the road.
“Some folks would say we don”™t have tourism in Westchester. It”™s not viable,” Caputo said. “But it”™s an important industry and we have to help promote it.”
Caputo”™s department is currently promoting the Hyatt Place hotel in the Cross County Shopping Center in Yonkers, which held a soft opening in April and will host a grand opening June 16. The nine-floor, 155-room hotel touts itself as a destination for customers visiting Empire City Casino at Yonkers Raceway or nearby New York City attractions like the Bronx Zoo or Yankee Stadium.
Another summer tourist draw, the KPMG Women”™s PGA Championship, has a six-day run this month at Westchester Country Club in Harrison. It marks the first time the tournament, previously known as the LPGA Championship, has been in Westchester after five years in suburban Rochester.
“An event like the KPMG Women”™s PGA Championship is a great example of the kind of world class events that we enjoy bringing to Westchester County,” Caputo said in a statement. “We are enthusiastic about the return of professional golf to the county. We encourage everyone to ”˜Meet Me in Westchester”™ and enjoy the thrill of the game.”
The tourism department in 2012 launched Meet Me in Westchester, a $300,000 multimedia advertising and branding campaign targeting both tourists and business travelers. Initially focusing on prospective visitors within a 100-mile radius of the county, the campaign promoted restaurants, hiking and biking trails and meeting and conference centers through Web and print advertisements. The county”™s Tourism Department has updated its social media platforms and launched a YouTube channel last year to showcase hotels and other attractions.
In 2011, the year before the Meet Me in Westchester campaign was introduced, the county reported $1.66 billion in visitor spending. The most recent figures showed visitor spending reached $1.68 billion in 2012 and stayed at that level in 2013.
The county”™s annual total in those years amounted to 53 percent of all visitor spending in the Hudson Valley region. Westchester ranked third among destinations in the state for visitor spending behind New York City and Long Island. Tourism supported 23,073 jobs directly and indirectly in 2013 ”” or 6 percent of all jobs in the county ”” a figure unchanged from the prior year.
But the county has regained its recessionary losses that totaled nearly $27 million. The 2013 figures show local taxes brought in $109 million, a rise of 1 percent from the previous year.
Rye Playland, the county-owned amusement park, has thrived recently. The 280-acre park attracted 467,948 visitors in 2014, a 20 percent increase from 2013. Playland took in $8,750,455 in gross revenue last year, up nearly $1.7 million from 2013, according to the Westchester County Board of Legislators.
Westchester County Executive Robert P. Astorino has said he wants to make a year-round destination of Playland, whose season now runs from May through September. County legislators will vote on whether to privatize management of the amusement park on June 15.
