R.I. tourism strong, outlook steady

Despite major obstacles, including natural disasters and astronomical gas prices, the tourism industry continued to rebound in 2005, a speaker from the Travel Industry of America (TIA) said last week in Newport.
Suzanne Cook, senior vice president of research and technology planning for the organization, said the industry has started to track to pre-Sept. 11 levels, fueled by strong increases in domestic travel this year.
Cook told state tourism leaders that TIA is projecting a 4-percent increase in travel revenue this year. Cook said leisure travel has grown this year, a trend reflected in increases in air travel and hotel business.
New England is reportedly lagging behind the rest of the nation, Cook said, but Rhode Island has remained strong, “enjoying the highest occupancy rates as well as highest room rates in the region.”
Data from Smith Travel Research released earlier this year shows Rhode Island hotels had an occupancy rate of 68.1 percent, a rate 6 percent higher than Connecticut, the New England state with the second-highest occupancy rate.
Smith Travel also reported that Rhode Island rooms rented for an average of $75.96 in 2004, which is $6 more than second-place Massachusetts and nearly $30 more than Maine.
David DePetrillo, state tourism director, said in an interview last week that hotels in the Providence and Newport areas experienced “record increases” in 2004, with total revenue up 7 percent from 2003.
The occupancy rates through October for 2005 have dipped from 2004 figures, DePetrillo said. However, with an increase in room rates and total rooms, hotels are keeping pace with last year’s revenue, he said.
The picture is a welcome one at a time when the industry feared it may struggle, Cook said in her speech. In a year that saw devastating earthquakes and hurricanes, travel businesses worried that people would be reluctant to spend money in their industry.
“We saw it in consumer confidence and in intention to travel … many of us were concerned,” Cook said. “I’m happy to say we have a little bit of a rosier picture in the past few weeks.”
In the short-term future, however, the industry will be forced to contend with rising energy costs, she said. And, while the industry has been holding steady, economists still remain pessimistic about what consumer spending reports will look like for the final months of 2005.
Surveying consumer indexes and other economic factors, Cook said the TIA is expecting a 2-percent increase in 2006, a figure less than this year’s projected 4-percent increase.
Faced with the challenges and new environments of the future, Cook called on the tourism industry to avoid “homogenization of the landscape,” which would give people little reason to travel.