April 05–WILLIAMSBURG — A once hardy economy in the Historic Triangle that was built on tourism is becoming more fragile by the year.

Fewer people are buying fewer tickets to area attractions, spending fewer nights in Williamsburg, James City County and York County, according to figures compiled by tourism marketing and research organizations.

Why tourism faltered is difficult to diagnose, according to local tourism officials. Some blame the economic downtown, some say tickets to local attractions cost too much. Others point to a trend of more overnight visitors staying in the area’s myriad time shares, spending fewer dollars on hotels and in restaurants.

Traffic is another deterrent, with Interstate 64 backed up westbound every weekend during the summer months. A planned widening to six lanes will help loosen the tie-ups in Newport News, but could simply shift the bottleneck west to greater Williamsburg.

Even if tourism professionals had the answers to fix tourism, returning visitation to its heyday in the late 1970s and early 1980s might require reducing emphasis on what has driven tourism locally for 80 years — history.

“Historical tourism sites have been in a downward trend for more than 20 years,” said Williamsburg Mayor Clyde Haulman, who has studied the situation in his role as a professor of economics at the College of William and Mary, and as the face of city government.

He recommended a 2008 article written by Cary Carson, former vice president for research at Colonial Williamsburg. It’s aptly titled “The End of History Museums: What’s Plan B?”

In the article, Carson notes the problems of historical museums across the country and speculates that, like drive-in movies, traveling circuses, bridge and the music industry, they may be falling victim to new media — television and the Internet.

Carson points out that in the four years after 2000, yet before the recession, attendance fell 18 percent at Colonial Williamsburg, 15 percent at Monticello and 28 percent at Mount Vernon.

“Nobody believes that history museums are better off today than they were in, say, the good old days of Enola Gay and Disney’s America,” Carson wrote.

Hard to measure decline

The first problem in examining tourism in the Historic Triangle is that no one really knows how many people come here each year.

“The first thing we need to do is to figure out where we are,” said hotelier Chris Canavos. “If you ask how many people visit New York City or Virginia Beach in a year, they can tell you.”

But is the number accurate? The best tourism professionals can do for the Williamsburg market is an educated estimate. That number is between 3 and 4 million visitors per year on average.

“I think most people in the business would agree the number is in that range,” said Williamsburg Hotel-Motel Association executive director Ron Kirkland. The estimate is based on a total of paid admissions of the area’s attractions.

Last year, Colonial Williamsburg recorded 651,000 paid admissions, according to the foundation’s annual report, with a “turnstile count” — an attempt to factor in the number of actual visits made by people with multiday and annual passes — of 1.5 million.

SeaWorld Parks’ local attractions, Busch Gardens and Water Country USA, drew about 3 million visitors combined last year, according to industry sources. The Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation reported 560,072 combined visitors at Jamestown Settlement and the Yorktown Victory Center for 2013. The National Park Service reported more than 3 million visitors for Colonial Historical Park for 2012, but that number includes cars on the Colonial Parkway, capturing commuters as well as tourists, according to Park Service spokesman Mike Byrd. Historic Jamestowne reported 210,000 paid admissions in 2012. Paid admission figures for Yorktown Battlefield, the other component of Colonial Historical Park, were unavailable.

Some who visit the area go to more than one attraction, but how many is one of the subjects on which tourism professionals lack reliable data.

No one knows how many people visit Great Wolf Lodge each year, because the company treats its attendance figures as proprietary. Based on what information it would provide — that its 400 suites have slightly more than 50 percent occupancy, and estimating four people per suite, the indoor water park could attract as many as 350,000-400,000 guests per year. Admission to the water park is limited to hotel guests.

Whatever the actual tourism number may be, it’s clear to the key players that it’s lower than it was 20 to 30 years ago.