Ferries, Long Taken for Granted, are Now in Trouble

What do over 50,000 workers, every major cultural institution, and San Francisco’s
municipal budget have in common? The answer is that all rely on tourism to pay the bills. The September 11 terrorists attacks, which knocked the legs out from under San Francisco’s tourism industry, presents this important industry with its greatest crisis ever. The Bay Area, happy enough to reap the financial rewards of tourism in good times, has done inexcusably little to help tourism in its time of need. This shortsighted and ungrateful response may have profound implications, especially for ferries.

San Franciscans have never been eager to acknowledge their reliance on tourism. They disdain tourists as cretinous annoyances, deluding themselves into believing that "sexy" industries like technology or finance pull the fiscal cart. Yet it is the unappreciated tourism industry that puts the bread on San Francisco’s table. Tourism props up proud cultural institutions like the San Francisco Opera and Symphony via the Hotel Tax Fund. It gives jobs to over 50,000 people, many of them people of color, a matter one would expect a liberal community to take seriously. The bottom line is that tourism is San Francisco’s paycheck.

And without ferries that paycheck won’t clear. Fully eight of ten visitors to San Francisco get onto a ferryboat, be it for a trip to Alcatraz, a Bay Cruise, or, increasingly, a ride aboard one of the increasingly popular commuter lines.

The bottom dropped out of the Bay Area tourist business after 9/11, falling 80% or more in the days immediately after the attack. This is a regional crisis for communities like Sausalito, Tiburon, Vallejo and Oakland are increasingly reliant on tourism. It has since rebounded somewhat, but remains about 50% down from same time last year.

Ferry companies like the Blue & Gold and Red & White Fleets are disproportionately affected because, unlike restaurants and hotels that can move quickly to cut costs, the cost structure of ferry companies is capital-intensive and largely fixed. Every ferry operator is bleeding losses and cutting staff as fast as possible. Cutbacks in service are not far off. Contraction, even the bankruptcy, of key ferry companies is not out of the question.

Surely, such a direct threat to San Francisco’s prime economic resource would call for a dramatic response from the "City that knows how". Yet unless something else happens soon, the record will show that all Mayor Willie Brown’s could offer was a call to shopkeepers to put up posters with the treacly exhortation to "Shop America". It must be unmistkably acknowledged that this Mayor has been a champion for local tourism and is, indeed, the father of plans for a comprehensive regional ferry service. Yet this makes even more confounding that so little is being done. As for Governor Gray Davis, he led a gaggle of politicians down to Fishermen’s Wharf to announce $5 million for advertising to spur local tourism, which has yet to have any meaningful effect.

Give the San Francisco’s Convention and Visitor’s Bureau (CVB) credit for achieving San Francisco’s seemingly unassailable place -- up to now -- as the world’s top tourist destination. It should also accept responsibility for reacting to the current crisis like a deer caught in the headlights. For example, to cut costs the Bureau shut down for business during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Shouldn’t the Bureau have instead been burning the midnight oil marshalling resources, making plans, lining up support? Why hasn’t the CVB led other Bay Area Visitor’s Bureaus to form a regional alliance promoting local tourism? Shouldn’t San Francisco’s CVB naturally be expected to lead such an initiative?

In this time of crisis, the community’s response to San Francisco Bay’s tourism industry cry for help has been "you’re on your own". In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, $15 billion was found at the national level for the airlines; why no proportionate support for grass-roots tourism businesses?

Left to fend for itself, the San Francisco tourism industry has done what it could. The Fishermen’s Wharf Merchants Association, in partnership with the Port of San Francisco, has advertised to persuade Bay Area residents to rediscover their own backyard. This effective campaign, undertaken with a shoestring budget, underscores what a larger scale and better-supported initiative might have done.

All is not gloom and doom. Air travel exceeded expectations over the Christmas Holidays and, though still down 10-20% from last year, the trend is in the direction of a return to business as usual. Indeed, Oakland International Airport equaled last year’s numbers.

But it is a serious error to simply count on things getting better all on their own. City, state and CVB officials must move dynamically to provide assistance, including direct financial support, to battered tourism-related businesses, especially ferry companies. Advertising campaigns, aggressive as they are imaginative, must be broadcast to encourage Bay Areans to consider local destinations.

And we must learn from this painful experience. There are already calls in the U.S. Congress for a panel on the model of the Warren Commission to study how the 9/11 attacks happened and how to be better prepared in future. Our national security depends on nothing less. At the appropriate time, a formal review should be made of the shamefully inadequate support provided to the Bay Area’s crucial tourism industry during this crisis. Our regional financial security depends on it!