"Despite the bureau's efforts, Desination Palo Alto's results have so far been ambiguous, if not meager. "


This could have been predicted from the start. What a colossal waste of time and money. There is not a single city on our Peninsula that understands anything significant about Marketing in a way that truly differentiates, and drives people to alter behavior. I can't say enough bad things about these "city promotion" programs, because they're run by non-marketers; they're staid, and they just plain don't work. When they are claimed to work, they always use the statistical error of 'causation by correlation', claiming that just because they were there, people visited the region/city. Lame.

Waste of money. As a frequent overnight visitor to Palo Alto, my visit is caused by necessity and proximity, not some inane, ineffective, quickly forgotten advertisement. I will take my business elsewhere if the hotel tax is increased.

My question is if traffic is such a problem in Palo Alto, then why are we encouraging more people to come into town. Or does our council believe that these people will, walk, bicycle or take Caltrain into Palo Alto.
If, as one former councilmember alwyas likes to say, even one new net car trip is too many for Palo Alto, then we should be discouraging people from coming to Palo Alto. We need to discourage any building of new hotels and encourage those that exist to leave town

The site is really not attractive. How can it attract people to Palo Alto?

Its cost is astounding considering that it is so plain. Few photos, that are repeated throughout in some cases. A home page that is colorless, etc. To tell you the truth, I regularly advertise Palo Alto to European acquaintances and I hesitate to direct them to Destination Palo Alto for advertising the area.

Furthermore, good promotion of local tourism does not start with hotels, stores and restaurants, but with local attractions. Tourists do NOT decide to come for hotels but for attractions (business travelers are another story). Once they have decided to come, then they look at hotels, but only then.

I suggest that Palo Alto look at what is done in Europe to promote tourism. Now, that is well-done and if copied here could be much more effective.

I love living here, but PA is a destination for business and Stanford - not tourists. Not that we shouldn't provide information to visitors, but no one is coming to Palo Alto just to see Palo Alto.

This story states that Palo Alto achieved a 78% return on its investment in the Destination Palo Alto Program in 2009. $186K is indeed 78% of $240K, but it is not a 78% return on investment. It is a loss. To achieve a 78% return on investment, the city would have to have taken in $427K, i.e., recovered BOTH the amount of its investment AND an additional 78% of that investment.

Palo Alto mom, you are right. Tourists won't come to the area just for Palo Alto. However, we can convince them to spend time in Palo Alto or even use Palo Alto as a good home base for a stay in the area, from which they can go to San Francisco, but also to Monterey/Carmel, Santa Cruz, and many other points beyond.

I always try to sell Palo Alto to potential European visitors as a base for visiting the Bay Area, and I've been successful repeatedly. I tell them about our good weather to come back to after a dreary summer day in San Francisco, and about the pleasant, laid back environment. I tell them how central it is to many places they might want to take a day trip to, such as those mentioned above.

When they have children, I tell them about all the local attractions for children in the area, from the Tech in San Jose, to the quaint Palo Alto children's attractions, to many other places in the Peninsula all the way up to SF.

Lastly, believe it or not, European tourists are very fond of taking a "gawking" tour of Silicon Valley. They'll go to Google, Yahoo, etc. and snap photos or their headquarters, preferably with themselves in the photos.

So, Palo Alto makes sense as a base for a Bay Area stay, but this city's Palo Destination website is not good enough to advertise it well.

Increasing the already expensive room tax to promote hotels will discourage tourism. How about setting up bicycle rental stations around Stanford, Train Stations, down town and bayland so that tourists as well as residents can enjoy our city without emission and parking. This would be a great publicity for Palo Alto tourism in general. Putting us at the forfront of "green" city. I heard Paris and West Lake in China both have such bike program.

If Council really wants to demonstrate that they intend to cutback and save money they can start by eliminating this extravagant, overpriced, and total waste of money. We're watching Council, so vote to end "Destination Palo Alto" and save us tax payers the $240,000. Then put that money to good use on infrastructure repairs.

If Council really wants to demonstrate that they intend to cutback and save money they can start by eliminating this extravagant, overpriced, and total waste of money. We're watching Council, so vote to end "Destination Palo Alto" and save us tax payers the $240,000. Then put that money to good use on infrastructure repairs.

The failure of this program can be laid at the feet of the former city manager, and council members like Beecham, Kishimoto and Kleinberg. There was no support for this idea outside a few "spend money" types, because it is clear that Palo Alto has nothing to offer, other than access to highway 101, and Stanford.

We have a Chamber of Commerce and a Downtown Business Improvement District, and a California Secret Society of Merchants .. and what comes of all of their efforts and money spent on dues, fees and taxes?

Palo Alto should stop spending money stupidly. Maybe there is some payback for sponsoring recreational events for regional residents in the $10-$20K range, but spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to offer people a walk down aging University Avenue to look at all of the "For Rent" signs doesn't make any sense.

"because it is clear that Palo Alto has nothing to offer"

What do you mean nothing to offer--we have the ONLY shopping center in the country designed by Joseph Eichler--once it is revitalized (in about 20 years the way our city council operates) tourists will be flocking there. Plus we have a large inventory of "historic" homes--remember the old historic ordinance when a current council member tried to have everything over 50 years old declared historic? Can't you see tourists flocking there as well?

@Too Much Traffic: All the data show that hotels have less impact in traffic and city services than housing. Hotels generate relatively few car trips, and those trips tend to occur at different times of the day, compared with residents and businesses. Hotels bring in revenue to the city, shoppers in our stores, and diners in our restaurants.

No "net new trips" is a good idea, particularly if developers can use offsets to reduce traffic elsewhere, such as subsidizing expansion of the Palo Alto Shuttle or even school buses for our students, or funding Vicky Ching's bike rental stations. (The hotels could provide rental bikes too.)

> such as subsidizing expansion of the Palo Alto Shuttle

This shuttle is empty most of the time now. Increasing funding for it will be a waste of money.

> “We need to discourage any building of new hotels and encourage those that exist to leave town.”

Certainly worked in the case of Rickey’s! But why discourage hotels? They put far less stress on the infrastructure than housing. No kids in the schools. Less traffic.

Palo Alto is not a destination. Our former city council members (named above) had delusions of grandeur. Let’s hope the new group is more realistic.

Unless one has friends or family here, why would anyone stay in Palo Alto instead of Monterey/Carmel or SF?

Thank you Ann Bilodeau for pointing out the fallacy of the 78% ROI. I wonder if that was the Weekly’s calculation or the city’s.

I second everyone above's comments- remove this program- the money can be spent better elsewhere.

I just checked out the Destination Palo Alto web site and found it to be quite good. But now that we have it, why do we (Palo Alto) have to keep paying for its creation? Maintenance of site should be for a lot less money...

The first bureaucracy failed so the city is going to do a second one, and hope it works better?

Re the Destination Palo Alto website: The Palo Alto Weekly maintains this website at no charge. The Weekly received $15,000 to design and build it initially. The money in the city's current Destination Palo Alto contract all goes to the San Mateo County/Silicon Valley Convention & Visitors Bureau to support its efforts to promote this area to convention and meeting planners.

Almost every comment says we should get rid of this rip off of our scarce tax money. I shows how smart residents are. Now let's hope our council is equally intelligent - unlike the ones that approved the idea.

The ROI "calculation" was in CMR138:10 re the "Destination Palo Alto" project. It was prepared by Susan Barnes, Manager of Economic Deveolpment/Redevelopment, and signed by Curtis Williams and James Keene.

We don't Need any more European tourists than we have already!! as a mother of three i dont need my children influenced by outsiders with French and short shorts...i believe new york city and LoS Angales are perfect places for toursits. why pollute palo alto!!!