Encouraging Houston Tourism - What would you do?

[Nick_G]

Houston and the metro areas already have some tourist attractions; these include the Theater District, the Space Center, Galveston, and Kemah but I think we should put more emphasis on the tourism industry to help diversify the local economy and so us locals can take advantage of the increased number of entertainment choices. I am looking for this thread to cover two subjects.

First, which tourist attraction is your favorite and why?

Second, what ideas you have for getting more tourists walking on the city streets especially in the winter when we have some of the best weather in the country?

[Pumapayam]

Another tourism thread!? Really? There aren't enough on HAIF already?

Niche, he's relatively new to the forum, cut him some slack.

Just send a request to merge it with whatever thread you think it belongs.

[Nick_G]

Niche, he's relatively new to the forum, cut him some slack.

Just send a request to merge it with whatever thread you think it belongs.

Thanks for the support

Another tourism thread!? Really? There aren't enough on HAIF already?

I have been on here for less than a week, not since 2005, and have never used a forum before, I apologize for breaking your king of posts rules.

[infinite_jim]

My favorite tourist attraction is the Preston train stop and vicinity.

The best way for Houston to get tourists is to get more jobs. Jobs equal family visits; families equal tourist dollars.

[Houston19514]

Theater district and museum district. They need to do a much better job of marketing those two districts. Actually, that implies that they currently market those two districts. They need to do so.

I've mentioned this in other tourism threads... I am constantly amazed that HCVB does not take advantage of the huge opportunity to easily market to the millions of people who pass through George Bush Intercontinental every year. That place should be covered with photos and displays of the great parts of Houston, including small exhibit spaces for the various museums.

IAH is somewhat better in this regard than it used to be, but no thanks to the HCVB. (A few years ago, one could have spent hours in the terminals and not had a clue what city you were in.)

[Nick_G]

Theater district and museum district. They need to do a much better job of marketing those two districts. Actually, that implies that they currently market those two districts. They need to do so.

I've mentioned this in other tourism threads... I am constantly amazed that HCVB does not take advantage of the huge opportunity to easily market to the millions of people who pass through George Bush Intercontinental every year. That place should be covered with photos and displays of the great parts of Houston, including small exhibit spaces for the various museums.

IAH is somewhat better in this regard than it used to be, but no thanks to the HCVB. (A few years ago, one could have spent hours in the terminals and not had a clue what city you were in.)

I agree with you 100%. Anyone know who we could get in contact with to do something about that?

[LarryDierker]

New York Times

http://www.visithoustontexas.com/

[Subdude]

New York Times

http://www.visithoustontexas.com/

*groan*

Honestly, you would think they could come up with something that would actually appeal to tourists.

On a side note, a number of off-topic posts were removed in response to the string of member complaints received today.

[Nick_G]

*groan*

Honestly, you would think they could come up with something that would actually appeal to tourists.

On a side note, a number of off-topic posts were removed in response to the string of member complaints received today.

Subdude, thank you for removing the off topic posts.

[Nick_G]

New York Times

http://www.visithoustontexas.com/

I will send an email to Holly Chapman, VP of Marketing and copy both Lindsey Brown, Director of Marketing and Public Relations and Lauren Baker Advertising and Marketing Manager inquiring about any plans to market the Theater and Museum Districts in IAH and post the response once received.

Keep the ideas coming.

[lockmat]

I will send an email to Holly Chapman, VP of Marketing and copy both Lindsey Brown, Director of Marketing and Public Relations and Lauren Baker Advertising and Marketing Manager inquiring about any plans to market the Theater and Museum Districts in IAH and post the response once received.

Keep the ideas coming.

Is this your grass roots initiative or do you work for the City or something? Just curious.

[Nick_G]

Is this your grass roots initiative or do you work for the City or something? Just curious.

I don't work for the city, just love it and want to make the most of what we have.

[Nick_G]

I will send an email to Holly Chapman, VP of Marketing and copy both Lindsey Brown, Director of Marketing and Public Relations and Lauren Baker Advertising and Marketing Manager inquiring about any plans to market the Theater and Museum Districts in IAH and post the response once received.

Keep the ideas coming.

Response from Lindsey Brown, Director of Marketing

"Unfortunately, we spend our advertising dollars in markets outside of Houston to bring visitors to the city. We’ve tried to work with JCDecaux to give us a break in their pricing since we’re a nonprofit, promoting the city, etc., but no luck. Our dollars go much further when we don’t work with JCDecaux.

If you have any specific thoughts on how to reduce rates at the airport, we’d be interested in learning more.

If you’re interested to see what we have been advertising lately, I’ve attached our ad that ran in the Texas section of the New York Times last Friday.

Also, please click on this link to see the TV spot we’re running on Bravo during Top Chef right now.

Anyone on here work in marketing?

[crunchtastic]

I do. While I know it's tempting to think a few good ideas are all we need, I can assure you that the woman who's job is to get an ROI on her ad budget knows better. Pumping money for museum district ads at the airport is a questionable spend at a good rate, and off the table at a high rate. Museums are generally not impulse visits. Tourists arrive in a city with at least a rough plan; business travellers will consume local culture if it is very close to their business visits and if a local suggests a stop, and that assumes the traveler is a culture vulture to begin with. Museums get more ad bang for their buck in regional media, because they know a significant number of folks (and school buses) will drive from Beaumont to Houston, for example, to see Tut. And Tut has ad legs and money from the show in addition to the museum itself.

It's interesting you bring this up, because the same principles apply to cultural events with much lower name recognition. I recently drove to Fort Worth for a weekend specifically to see an exhibit at the Kimbell. I actually found out about it through print advertising in a small circulation magazine. Flipping through a Texas Monthly while at the dentist. It was just a quarter page spot. Target, target, target-- I'd venture to guess that less than 1 in a 1,000 people in their geo market even know who Caravaggio was, but those who are familiar will spend money to travel due to it's rarity for the US market. Incidentally, that NYT Houston ad looks like it's actually part of a branding campaign targeted to people in SE Texas who get our regional printing of the paper delivered.

Speaking of Ft Worth, while driving around there we noticed their zoo utilizes the exact same outdoor campaign that the Houston Zoo does (the membership one). It's one of the better ones I've seen lately. A good way to get some economies of scale with your ad agency.

[Nick_G]

Glad to have someone on here with actual marketing insight.

I do. While I know it's tempting to think a few good ideas are all we need, I can assure you that the woman who's job is to get an ROI on her ad budget knows better.

I am sure they know their job well and perform their job better than I would as I have no marketing experience. The point of the discussion is to get more people thinking about ideas, and thinking about what we can do to help. Maybe the community will come up something that will help, maybe it won't, but it can't hurt to try. I contacted them because I actually want to do something to improve the city. The speed (about an hour after I sent my email) and quality of reply from their director of marketing gives me the impression that she appreciates our enthusiasm and is certainly willing to listen to ideas.

[editor]

Good for you, Nick G, for taking some action and actually writing to someone about an issue you care about. A lot of people just whine and complain and do nothing.

As for the New York Times ad -- it's a start. A very small start. It smacks of a one-time desperation move, and not of an overall strategy. Hopefully the city and HCVB have an advertising strategy.

The first thing she has to do is stop whining about JCDecaux. It's not charging those rates at the airport because it's fun. There aren't a bunch of guys sitting around a table shouting out random numbers for pricing. Those rates are what they are because advertising in those locations works. SAP isn't advertising at the airport because it wants to lose money. Ditto for Barracuda Networks, and all of the other advertisers at the airport.

In response to Crunch's notion that advertising at the airport isn't a good idea, I have to disagree. It's targeted advertising. You're reaching people who have already proven they're willing to travel, who have a certain amount of income they spend on travel each year, and most importantly -- who are thinking about your city at that exact moment! It's several million opportunities to turn travelers into visitors each day.

"Houston" is printed on the ticket in their hand. They had enough consciousness of the word to get to Bush Airport. The next step is for the HCVB to convert that word from the name of a city to a desirable destination. No, not for this trip -- but for next time.

"Hey, wifey -- I had to connect through Houston on my way home today, and from the posters I saw, it looks like a cool place. There's a space center, and a train connecting downtown with shopping, and you know how little Timmy loves soccer? They've got the coolest new stadium! And a beach! Did you know that Houston is on the coast? We should put it on our list of places to think about for vacation this year."

HCVB should work with city council to get an ordinance passed requiring JCD to give it a certain percentage of advertising space. The airport is run by an authority, it is not a private enterprise. Just like transit authorities in certain cities require Clear Channel to give 5%-20% of its advertising slots to city, non-profit, or other public service notices, the airport should have a certain percentage of its advertising given to the city for its use. HCVB has to stop thinking of advertising at the airport as a financial problem, and start thinking of it as a political one.

I know people hate when I compare Houston and Chicago on HAIF, but it's the city with which I'm most familiar.

Chicago's tourism people used to have the same complaint that Nick G does about Houston -- all these people coming into the airport, but just transferring and going elsewhere. It addressed that problem by aggressively promoting the city throughout the airport. Not just in traditional advertising, but through lots of other ways. The airport is absolutely STUFFED with art showcasing the city's skyline, pictures of neighborhoods, and tourist attractions. The airport authority can put this stuff up all it wants without violating any advertising contracts because it's ART. If the art makes people want to visit the city, then that's just a fortunate happenstance. Houston is always talking smack about what a great art city is -- it's time for the city to promote its artists at the airport with civic art contests, and promote the city at the same time.

IAH should have announcements every 30 minutes on the public address system: "The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only; there is no parking in the red zone. Free city of Houston tourism information is available at the kiosk in each departure concourse. There is no smoking in the airport."

Does anyone know what Houston's tourism advertising budget is? Chicago's is $17.8 million for 2012 -- and that's just for tourism. Conventions have a separate agency (the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority). Chicago is crying about only having 39.2 million international tourists in 2010, down from 46.3 million. Imagine an extra 110,000 tourists coming to Houston each DAY.

How many offices does Houston have overseas promoting tourism? My guess is zero, but I'm happy to be corrected. Chicago has one in London and one in Toronto, and is opening new offices in Mexico City, Brazil, India, Germany, and Japan. It's competing with New York, which has 18. Houston has to start realizing that tourism is an industry, not a hobby, and that has to take the competition seriously.

And it's not just the HCVB that should be promoting the city. Private groups should be doing it, too.

In Chicago (again with the Chicago...) the stores, hotels, and restaurants on ONE STREET are pooling their money this year to get people to come shop on their block. They're not handing out flyers at car washes -- they're spending a MILLION dollars targeting cities within 300 miles with TV ads. Imagine if all the museums in the Museum District chipped in and did something similar. Or all the art galleries in the city. Or all the boutiques in the Galleria Area. There'd be ads on TV stations in Dallas, Corpus Christi, New Orleans, Austin, and San Antonio. Why 300 miles? Because it's far enough that you get the kind of people who will turn a day trip into an overnight trip. This gets the restaurants and hotels to chip in because the people coming in are spending money on hotels and restaurants, and not just blowing in and out of the city and stopping at a Whataburger on the freeway.

Houston has always been a city of opportunity, and tourism is such a huge, virtually untapped, opportunity for it. Sometimes I wish I worked for HCVB because, like a lot of people, I love Houston, and I'm just oozing with ideas for promoting it.

[lockmat]

Ill be forwarding editors comments to the proper Houston personnel.

[Houston19514]

Good for you, Nick G, for taking some action and actually writing to someone about an issue you care about. A lot of people just whine and complain and do nothing.

As for the New York Times ad -- it's a start. A very small start. It smacks of a one-time desperation move, and not of an overall strategy. Hopefully the city and HCVB have an advertising strategy.

The first thing she has to do is stop whining about JCDecaux. It's not charging those rates at the airport because it's fun. There aren't a bunch of guys sitting around a table shouting out random numbers for pricing. Those rates are what they are because advertising in those locations works. SAP isn't advertising at the airport because it wants to lose money. Ditto for Barracuda Networks, and all of the other advertisers at the airport.

In response to Crunch's notion that advertising at the airport isn't a good idea, I have to disagree. It's targeted advertising. You're reaching people who have already proven they're willing to travel, who have a certain amount of income they spend on travel each year, and most importantly -- who are thinking about your city at that exact moment! It's several million opportunities to turn travelers into visitors each day.

"Houston" is printed on the ticket in their hand. They had enough consciousness of the word to get to Bush Airport. The next step is for the HCVB to convert that word from the name of a city to a desirable destination. No, not for this trip -- but for next time.

"Hey, wifey -- I had to connect through Houston on my way home today, and from the posters I saw, it looks like a cool place. There's a space center, and a train connecting downtown with shopping, and you know how little Timmy loves soccer? They've got the coolest new stadium! And a beach! Did you know that Houston is on the coast? We should put it on our list of places to think about for vacation this year."

HCVB should work with city council to get an ordinance passed requiring JCD to give it a certain percentage of advertising space. The airport is run by an authority, it is not a private enterprise. Just like transit authorities in certain cities require Clear Channel to give 5%-20% of its advertising slots to city, non-profit, or other public service notices, the airport should have a certain percentage of its advertising given to the city for its use. HCVB has to stop thinking of advertising at the airport as a financial problem, and start thinking of it as a political one.

I know people hate when I compare Houston and Chicago on HAIF, but it's the city with which I'm most familiar.

Chicago's tourism people used to have the same complaint that Nick G does about Houston -- all these people coming into the airport, but just transferring and going elsewhere. It addressed that problem by aggressively promoting the city throughout the airport. Not just in traditional advertising, but through lots of other ways. The airport is absolutely STUFFED with art showcasing the city's skyline, pictures of neighborhoods, and tourist attractions. The airport authority can put this stuff up all it wants without violating any advertising contracts because it's ART. If the art makes people want to visit the city, then that's just a fortunate happenstance. Houston is always talking smack about what a great art city is -- it's time for the city to promote its artists at the airport with civic art contests, and promote the city at the same time.

IAH should have announcements every 30 minutes on the public address system: "The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only; there is no parking in the red zone. Free city of Houston tourism information is available at the kiosk in each departure concourse. There is no smoking in the airport."

Does anyone know what Houston's tourism advertising budget is? Chicago's is $17.8 million for 2012 -- and that's just for tourism. Conventions have a separate agency (the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority). Chicago is crying about only having 39.2 million international tourists in 2010, down from 46.3 million. Imagine an extra 110,000 tourists coming to Houston each DAY.

How many offices does Houston have overseas promoting tourism? My guess is zero, but I'm happy to be corrected. Chicago has one in London and one in Toronto, and is opening new offices in Mexico City, Brazil, India, Germany, and Japan. It's competing with New York, which has 18. Houston has to start realizing that tourism is an industry, not a hobby, and that has to take the competition seriously.

And it's not just the HCVB that should be promoting the city. Private groups should be doing it, too.

In Chicago (again with the Chicago...) the stores, hotels, and restaurants on ONE STREET are pooling their money this year to get people to come shop on their block. They're not handing out flyers at car washes -- they're spending a MILLION dollars targeting cities within 300 miles with TV ads. Imagine if all the museums in the Museum District chipped in and did something similar. Or all the art galleries in the city. Or all the boutiques in the Galleria Area. There'd be ads on TV stations in Dallas, Corpus Christi, New Orleans, Austin, and San Antonio. Why 300 miles? Because it's far enough that you get the kind of people who will turn a day trip into an overnight trip. This gets the restaurants and hotels to chip in because the people coming in are spending money on hotels and restaurants, and not just blowing in and out of the city and stopping at a Whataburger on the freeway.

Houston has always been a city of opportunity, and tourism is such a huge, virtually untapped, opportunity for it. Sometimes I wish I worked for HCVB because, like a lot of people, I love Houston, and I'm just oozing with ideas for promoting it.

DITTO, DITTO, DITTO. Editor, this has to be your best post ever. I have mentioned O'Hare before in this context. The displays give travelers a real feel for the city and all that it has to offer. It's amazing branding, and opportunity Houston is COMPLETELY missing. I am sure Crunch knows his business, but I think he rather missed the point of displays at the airport. It's not impulse advertising to get current Houston visitors to jump in their cab and go directly to the Medical Museum. It's brand-building. Getting Houston's story out to the world. We have so many amazing things to tell the world about Houston but for some reason refuse to do so.

I also generally agree that we need to do more promotions in our regions, with the Museum District, shopping, Medical Center, etc. One advantage Chicago has in this regard is that it is the only huge city within its 300 mile radius (with the possible exception of Detroit). We of course have DFW to compete with. Nevertheless, we need to compete. I formerly lived in Oklahoma (both OKC and Tulsa). People there tend to go to Dallas for weekend visits and love Dallas. The ones who come to Houston come on business and very often stay in the suburbs and are only familiar with Greenspoint or the Energy Corridor and, thererfore, don't like Houston. Because they don't know anything about Houston.

I have long thought that Houston should market weekend packages to places like Oklahoma (most of which is beyond the 300 mile radius). (and for goodness sakes, again, tell our story in the airport; its ridiculous that people routinely come to Houston from Oklahoma on business and still know NOTHING about Houston.) Sorry for rambling, but this reminds me of when the Warwicke Hotel was being converted to Hotel ZaZa. I immediately thought it was a fantastic idea, easily marketed in connection with the Museum District, Medical Center, etc. etc. Our local (but nationally recognized) Hotel Consultant, whose name escapes me at the moment, predicted failure because there was no market for a hotel in that neighborhood. This is the kind of defeatist attitude that seems ridiculously dominant in Houston. We see it in spades on this board as well. Why is that?

[Nick_G]

Ill be forwarding editors comments to the proper Houston personnel.

Lockmat, did you forward these comments? I have been too busy for haif for the last several days but I want to make sure we continue to follow up.

[lockmat]

Lockmat, did you forward these comments? I have been too busy for haif for the last several days but I want to make sure we continue to follow up.

Naw, haven't had a chance. But I did watch two videos on youtube last night done by GHCVB of summaries for 2010 and 2011. It tells about what they are doing and accomplishments they have made. I found them interesting, you should search for and watch them.

[Nick_G]

Naw, haven't had a chance. But I did watch two videos on youtube last night done by GHCVB of summaries for 2010 and 2011. It tells about what they are doing and accomplishments they have made. I found them interesting, you should search for and watch them.

Interesting, I'll take a look tonight (can't youtube at work). Any highlights you can summarize?

I think it will be most effective to use one point of contact and since I already made contact with them on this subject I can take care of the note when we are ready.

[Nick_G]

Lockmat, those videos were a great find, GHCVB, puts out a lot of information going through what they have done each year. I have been going through them and have been learning a good amount doing so.

[Simbha]

This is an excellent thread. I'd been able to view bits and pieces since it started, but just got my first opportunity to read through it in its entirety.

My answers to your questions, Nick_G:

Which tourist attraction is your favorite and why?

Do I really have to choose just one? I staunchly refuse...

I'm not sure it's considered a 'tourist attraction', as even most Houstonians don't know about it... but, I absolutely LOVE the 'Seven Wonders' sculptures and the surrounding Sesquicentennial Park:

The reason? It's a beautiful sculpture from afar, and up close you can see what it really is: a celebration of Houston through the eyes of its children.

Of course, this can be considered an extension of the Theater District, which really can be considered a tourist destination. I wholly agree with infinite_jim regarding the area surrounding the Preston Street station, too - which is not far away.

I live in the Museum District, so I obviously like that area. I think we could do a better job of making it more pedestrian-friendly. I've suggested this elsewhere, but here goes again: I think the city or a nonprofit organization ought to build a 'circular' that takes people around to/from all the Museum District member facilities. I'd also like to see pedestrian bridges in the area which connect the main park to the Mecom Fountain, the Mecom-Rockwell Collonade and the Cancer Survivors Plaza - or, at least, better pedestrian walkways.

What ideas you have for getting more tourists walking on the city streets especially in the winter when we have some of the best weather in the country?

I agree with Houston19514 and the others that we should advertise at the airport (specifically, IAH).

One thing I think we need to do is build a consistent brand. The city touts itself as Space City, but this moniker is losing its edge as the manned spaceflight program is in jeopardy (due to both losses of funding and the privatization of spaceflight) and JSC is - as several people have told me - a 'Class C tourist attraction'. If we're going to bill ourselves as Space City, we ought to pay more attention to our Space City credentials, in my opinion. This is a problem, in general, with branding a city through an industry -- Industries within the city change.

I'd like to see us switch our official nickname to Bayou City. Given the proposed $500 million master plan connecting the bayous - and that they're a natural feature - it's a more forward-looking nickname for the city, in my opinion. No other city in the US - or world - has this, and it provides a focus for the city's future development.

One of the biggest problems Houston has its inability to get itself into films/television. A friend of mine who is a former Hollywood producer and - after that - lived in Houston for a time told me that the reason Houston is not better represented in film is because it's extremely difficult to find land on which to set up cameras/etc. This is one of Houston's characteristics: It's one of the most, if not THE most, capitalistic city in the world; nearly everything in the city is privately owned. That makes getting permission to film difficult, he says. A great example of this is the short-lived show, Lone Star. The show was about Houston (at least partially), yet it was filmed in DFW! If Houston wants to develop tourism, it has to develop a bigger reputation. That will take presence in film and television. And, THAT will take a concerted effort on the part of businesses, citizens and policy-makers. And, no -- converting the Astrodome into a massive studio won't do it.

My two - well, maybe more - cents.

Edit: One addition... I'd like to see Houston tell the world just how 'treed' it is. It is one of the most remarkable things about the city. People who visit me for the first time always remark about two things: they assumed they'd see cowboys everywhere (they don't) and they thought Houston was a dry desert (it isn't). Houston is a lush area with greenery and a HUGE number of trees: I have no idea if it's an accurate count, but the Texas Forest Service did a study that indicates that the region has 663 MILLION trees! In total, trees cover roughly 30% of the region, making the Houston area third-highest in terms of canopy coverage of major cities. This is branding that can be consistently built alongside the Bayou City moniker.

[Simbha]

I believe this is the video to which Lockmat refers above:

[crunchtastic]

I don't disagree at all with Editor's post above, but there's difference between GHCVB advertising and musuem (let's say the MFA) advertising. My point was specifically that if I did the museum advertising, it would likely not be at the airport --and for good reason.

The City can do a lot more to brand the Houston cultural experience, and should. I believe strongly that the city has a poor history of self promotion and we've paid a price for that. But to my post--the tactics used to brand a specific musuem experience are not the same as branding an entire city's arts experience. Once you're held to account for a large ad budget knowing poor results get you fired, you realize pretty fast that you've got to proiroitze all the awesome over-budget ideas. Look, it's not like the ad people haven't tried to make it work. No one's 'refusing' to tell Houston's story.

I'm tired that when a HAIFer talks intelligently about priorities and return on investmtent, they often get labeled as anti-Houston and anti-growth. It's clear that everyone here has super-awesome passionate ideas. But sending emails to an overworked & underpaid marketing person at the CVB whose had your idea and more tabled due to budget doesn't create change. Pooling resources at the micro-community level creates change. Convincing very wealthy people to raise funds will create change.

I read these posts... and it's as if some people think making public policy is like pitching an idea to Dreamworks. The trouble, metaphorically speaking, is that your swashbuckling CG honey badger will cost 24 million, and means that desperately needed street improvements to half the city get tabled for another 2 years. Addressing budget constraints and competing constituent needs is not defeatist. Defeatist? Hell, I'm the person who passionately defended turning the Astrodome into a state of the art indoor-agribusiness parntership and got roundly mocked for it.

[Nick_G]

I'm tired that when a HAIFer talks intelligently about priorities and return on investmtent, they often get labeled as anti-Houston and anti-growth. It's clear that everyone here has super-awesome passionate ideas. But sending emails to an overworked & underpaid marketing person at the CVB whose had your idea and more tabled due to budget doesn't create change. Pooling resources at the micro-community level creates change. Convincing very wealthy people to raise funds will create change.

Never thought you were anti-Houston or anything of that nature (although I don't think that was directed toward me anyway). I know nothing about marketing and do not claim to. I asked who we could contact and when given the information actually contacted them and I believe gained meaningful information in the process without requiring much time from the marketing personell. As was mentioned earlier I said we should wait to recontact until we figure out what if anything makes sense. In addition through this thread I have personally learned quite a bit about what the GHCVB does and how it spends it's money.

If pooling resources at the micro-community level and convincing very wealthy people to raise funds will create change then that is what we should focus on, again having the mentality that yes it may not lead anywhere but at least we can try.

[Simbha]

Here's something else I'll add...

If you want to encourage Houston tourism, perhaps THE most important step is to make Houston residents themselves of the wealth of offerings available. I don't remember who said it (and I'm too lazy to check if it was even said in this thread) but I agree with the notion that tourism development in large cities will first and foremost start with friends and family of residents.

It amazes me how little Houstonians know about their city. As an example: Before striking out on my own in business, I worked for an oil-and-gas company some years back. We had an affiliate from Norway visit us several times, and one time he flew his family in for a week because he was going to have to stay for three straight weeks and wanted to tour the city with them during the end-cap weekends. He asked around our office what there was to do in the city. In an office of 45 people, nobody (except me) could tell him what to do, other than JSC and the Galleria. I was flabbergasted!

When I first came to Houston, a friend (who actually knows the city well) told me the following:

Regarding New York, they say "It's a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there." Well, Houston's the opposite: "It's a great place to live, but I wouldn't want to visit here."

I've been here for 17 years, and this statement is just as true today as it was then. It's true that 'the city' doesn't promote its amazing offerings, but I think we too often associate the term 'city' with the government and/or the 'city leaders'. In reality, cities are just collectives of people (obviously) and it takes those same people to tell others about what the city has to offer. I'm all for advertising campaigns, etc - but I wonder if the greatest bang-for-the-buck might be to focus inward on our own citizens and help them understand what makes Houston so great.

[TheNiche]

Simbha nailed it. My company had international guests here for two weeks, with someone taking them to lunch and dinner nearly every day. But the venues were unimaginative, mostly chain restaurants. They got to see the standard tourist fare, Space Center Houston, San Jac, the Galleria...that kind of thing. I assumed responsibility for a couple evenings and took them downtown. They hadn't seen it yet! I'd just figured...tourists...tall buildings. They should go together. And indeed they did. They liked downtown (and the midtown Spec's) and considered it the best evening they had in Houston. But nobody at my office had thought to do this! Why? It should've been so obvious.

I think that part of it is that the older generation remembers when downtown sucked and that they abandoned hope for it decades ago. Also, they've had the opportunity over the course of their lives to travel all over the world and see the most grandiose urban environments. It can be lost on them that the younger generation got out of school just in time to find a good job and then get laid off from it (by the older generation). It can also be lost on people that many visitors just aren't from very cosmopolitan places and are easy to impress.

Since then, I've tried to be a tour guide whenever possible. It isn't that difficult. (Then again, I don't know what I'd do if I officed somewhere like Spring.) But, it would be fantastic if the Houston experience were laid out in an all-encompassing user-friendly format on a website. Websites like b4-u-eat.com and 29-95.com are good resources, but aren't very helpful for the spacially and culturally disoriented. Do that, then promote the bejeezus out of it at places like airports and hotels (even locally, to suburbanites that rarely come into town), and that'd be good bang for the buck.

[Nick_G]

Simbha and TheNiche, that is an excellent and achievable proposition especially with the brain trust of Houston knowledge from this forum. I will look into the best ways to put up something like this over the next few days, if anyone has insight on what software to use, where to host, etc please make it known.

[Simbha]

Simbha and TheNiche, that is an excellent and achievable proposition especially with the brain trust of Houston knowledge from this forum. I will look into the best ways to put up something like this over the next few days, if anyone has insight on what software to use, where to host, etc please make it known.

It may not be the best, but I created a blog on Blogspot yesterday, called Visit Houston: http://visithouston.blogspot.com/. I'd be happy to include anyone else as authors, as long as it's kept civil and accurate. I haven't actually posted anything yet.

If anyone has any better suggestions, please let us know.