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More Visitors
More of the Time
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Business New Haven
2/22/1999
By: Susan Banfield
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For decades, the Connecticut shoreline has been a popular summer destination for vacationers. Its tranquil beaches, rustic setting, and the opportunity for a family outing to Mystic have long drawn people to the area. Families from the central part of the state, especially, have been regular vacationers here.
But in recent years the regional tourism picture has changed. The opening of the casinos, the expansion of the Mystic complex, and the increased marketing of such cultural attractions as the International Festival of Arts & Ideas or the Yale University museums have brought in a larger, more year-round, and somewhat different mix of visitors.
The beach in summertime is still very much at the core of what people find attractive about southern Connecticut. “It's pretty hard to get a room if you call at the last minute,” notes Jackie LaBella, executive director of the River Valley & Shoreline Tourism District. “There is a two-night minimum at most motels and hotels on the shore.”
Old Saybrook's population swells from 9,500 to between 20,000 and 23,000 in the summer time. The town has row upon row of summer beach cottages and homes, some of which are used by their owners as second homes, many of which are rented out during the warmer months.
Old Saybrook also boasts 12 motels, hotels and bed-and-breakfast establishments. The rental houses are so popular that Jan Murray of J&M Realty wishes she had more homes to rent. Saybrook Point Inn recently expanded from 62 to 80 rooms in order to keep up with the growing demand for lodging.
Westbrook is another popular shoreline vacation destination. It boasts six bed-and-breakfasts, a motel with cottages, and the Water's Edge Inn & Resort. The motel, Maples Motel, has been hosting vacationers since 1947.
With its 11 rooms, six small housekeeping cottages, pool and two acres of land, it has long been a favorite with families. Now, rooms and cottages for Independence Day, Memorial Day and Labor Day must be booked months in advance.
Maples Manager Elaine Crawford also notices that there has been a large increase in foreign guests over the last decade and, in the last five years, more visitors coming from elsewhere in the U.S.
Along with the shoreline beaches, Mystic Seaport has also been a steady draw since it opened 70 years ago. With its tall ships, old houses and recreated 19th-century village, Mystic has long been a favorite with families.
“Mystic is the most widely known brand name that the state of Connecticut possesses,” says Peter Glankoff, Mystic's director of communications. “The Mystic name is magic.”
With the new aquarium scheduled to open this spring, and work on the Amistad replica continuing, Mystic is drawing larger crowds than ever: Over half a million people now visit the coastal town each year.
Mystic attractions generate $7.5 million annually in tax revenue for the state. The number of hotel rooms in the area has nearly doubled from 2,800 or 2,900 a couple of years ago to 5,300, and AAA recently named Mystic to its list of tourism “hot spots.”
Glankoff waxes optimistic about the town's future. “An improved infrastructure [principally improvements to I-95] could make this a world-class destination,” he says.
While the lure of the shoreline and of Mystic as tourist attractions have remained steady or increased, how do the casinos fit into the state tourism picture? There is no doubt they are a gargantuan attraction. Foxwoods Resort Casino welcomes about 40,000 visitors a day, and the Mohegan Sun between 14,000 and 18,000.
They also do much to make the entire region more marketable as a tourist destination. “This area could evolve from a day trip to an extended stay,” says Mystic's Glankoff. “There's enough to do now. It's going to happen.”
However, the casinos as well are largely responsible for a shift in the type of visitors the area is attracting. “Before the casinos, the number of those who came for family vacations was relatively high,” says George Donnelly, marketing director for the Mystic & More Tourism District. Now, he says, statistics show that 88 percent of those who visit come without children.
Glankoff expresses concern that, with the casinos spending four times as much on publicity and marketing as the state is spending on the region's other attractions combined, Connecticut may soon come to be known as “the casino state.”
However, the place of the casinos in the overall tourism picture has been waning somewhat in the last couple of years. In a survey done by the Mystic & More Tourism District of people who made inquiries of its office and subsequently visited the region, only 19 percent of respondents last year said they visited Foxwoods and just three percent the Mohegan Sun - compared with 69 percent visiting Mystic Seaport and 46 percent Mystic Aquarium. The proportion visiting Foxwoods is down significantly from the 1996 figure of 36 percent.
Also, unlike gaming hotels in other cities, whose goal is to keep visitors inside their facility, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun have both shown themselves more than willing to cooperate with regional marketing efforts, Glankoff reports. It seems, now that the newness of the casinos has worn off, that they are finding their place in the mix of the region's attractions, rather than dominating it.
Another group of regional attractions that has been on the rise of late are the various cultural offerings to be found in greater New Haven itself.
These are an especially strong draw for foreign visitors: During the 1997-98 fiscal year, 19,053 people took the tour of Yale offered by the university's Office of Tourism, and approximately 60,000 came through the tourism offices.
“We have a lot of foreign people, and people from out-of-state,” Manager of Visitor Information Shirley Johnson notes. “A lot of people are coming to see Yale as prospective students - but a lot just come to see Yale. They see it in their tour books and they come.”
Johnson adds that, “The art galleries and the theaters are a big draw, too.” Although the Yale Center for British Art was closed until earlier this month for renovations, in 1997, 95,225 people visited the museum. Of those, 40 percent were from outside Connecticut, and 20 percent were foreign.
Now that the BCA is reopened, an expanded exhibition schedule is planned (Director Patrick McCaughey is scheduling the museum's first summer exhibitions), and this will likely make for an increase in visitors.
In looking at the area's main tourist attractions, two overall trends - beyond the overall increase in visitors - emerge.
The first is that increasingly, vacationers are coming year-round, not just in the summer. Donnelly notes that in his district, while summer is still the most popular time to come, “Spring and fall are getting to be almost as busy.”
Even the shoreline towns, traditionally known as summer resorts, are proving popular destination at other times of the year as well. “We're definitely getting to be more year-round,” says Elaine Crawford of Westbrook's Maples Motel. “Now January and February are the only quiet time.”
Another trend is the increase in the number of out-of-state and foreign visitors. As noted above, Yale and other New Haven cultural attractions are pulling in a goodly number of foreigners.
The same trend can be seen even in summer shoreline vacationing however. “People are coming from all over the United States - California, Ohio, down South,” says J&M Realty's Murray of her summer rental clients.
Perhaps the secret is out at long last.
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