GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) - Greenville Streets and Sidewalks crew member Larrence Leverette pulled a dripping black trash bag from a city can on a recent morning, one of more than 180 receptacles he and seven other crew members attend to six days a week.
Cleanliness matters in a city where tourism is now a billion-dollar industry. Greenville’s leaders have for decades built a strategy to lure locals downtown with trees, sidewalk dining and events. Clever marketing coupled with a product - downtown Greenville - that lives up to the hype has made the city a hot destination for visitors as well.
Greenville is now the third most visited county in South Carolina, where one of the top five industries by employment is tourism, according to state figures. The state parks, recreation and tourism department describes it as a $21 billion industry with $13 billion in tourist expenditures statewide. Tourism also employs a little more than 10 percent of the state’s workforce.
Greenville attracts a sizable chunk of those tourism expenditures - nearly $1.2 billion in 2016, up from $1.14 billion the year before.
In a countywide market with about 9,000 hotel rooms, Greenville has on average more than 6,500 guests staying every day, according to the city-county tourism bureau, Visit Greenville. That’s 1,000 more people every day compared with 2011.
“It never feels like that, but that’s where it is,” said Chris Stone, president of Visit Greenville.
Greenville’s tourism growth, according to the state’s top tourism official, has been “phenomenal.”
“Greenville has had double-digit growth,” said Duane Parrish, director of the South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism. “Will Greenville ever catch up to the coast? No. That will never happen. Nonetheless, it is significant.”
Parrish said the industry standard for determining the health of an area’s tourism industry is revenue per available hotel room (RevPAR). RevPAR is a hotel’s average daily room rate (ADR) multiplied by its occupancy rate. A high RevPAR means full hotels selling rooms at high rates.
The growth in tourism has coincided with a concerted marketing effort, culminating in 2012 with the adoption of the “YeahTHATGreenville” slogan and social media campaign. Stone’s Visit Greenville staff blitzed social media with the slogan and reached more than 295 million people in 2016 alone. They have also targeted prestige publications. YeahTHATGreenville is the most used hashtag in the city.
The hard work seems to be paying off.
More recently, Money magazine recommended Greenville among its 2017 budget destinations, and the New York Times listed Greenville as No. 12 on its list of 52 places to go in 2017.
Significantly, though, a 2017 reader’s choice survey in Conde Nast Traveler, compiled from hundreds of thousands of responses, ranked Greenville No. 3 among best small cities to visit.
“In 2011 nobody knew about us,” Stone said. “You never know when you put something together how it’s going to be received.”
RevPAR has continued to increase in Greenville County, though at slower rates in 2016 and 2017, according to data provided by the state’s Parrish. The growth continued despite hotel construction that added 415 rooms to the area’s lodging inventory in 2016.
“We’re in the business of attracting more people and eyeballs,” Stone said. “We have to be talking to more people, the right people, about why they ought to come.”
Behind overall occupancy numbers, Stone’s team has uncovered some trends that could bode well. Weekday business travelers have traditionally edged out weekend travelers in Greenville. That changed for the first time in 2016, as weekend occupancy climbed to 74 percent, compared with weekday rates of 73 percent.
Location might have a lot to do with it.
Greenville is sandwiched between two world-class tourism markets: Asheville, North Carolina, and the South Carolina coast, led by Myrtle Beach, said Bill Norman, a Clemson professor of parks, recreation and tourism management.
“Greenville is in a neat position between the two, able to develop its own identity,” Norman said.
At stake, he said, are the millions of consumers in Atlanta looking for a place to spend the weekend.
“Everybody in the Southeast wants their money,” he said.
Today, about 8.2 million people visit Horry County (Myrtle Beach) annually, and 6.8 million visit Charleston County, according to state estimates. Beaufort County (Hilton Head) gets another 4.2 million.
In addition to having high visitation, those beach communities and Asheville tend to keep visitors in town longer and get them to spend more money while they are there, Parrish said. Horry County, for instance, receives just under 20 percent of the state’s visitors but hoovers up roughly 31 percent of all tourism spending.
By contrast, the Upstate receives about a third of the state’s visitors but only about 15 percent of tourism spending, Parrish said
Still, Parrish and other experts said, Greenville’s gradual rise as a tourism destination has tapped into something visitors want beyond resorts and marquee attractions.
“It’s all about being authentic about who you are,” Parrish said.
Visit Greenville’s Stone said the area has benefited from a shift in U.S. vacation behavior from extended visits once or twice a year to weekend trips a dozen times a year.
“People want to get out and away, away from technology,” Stone said. “There’s a hunger for doing things. Myrtle Beach and Hilton Head, they have been around for decades upon decades. We’re just the baby crawling. We are the bright, shiny thing that young people want to play with.”
No disrespect to Asheville, he said, “but people have been there.” As for Myrtle Beach, it lacks the city center, the feeling of community, that Greenville offers.
Jonathan Brashier, general manager of the Aloft hotel in downtown Greenville, said the four major areas he is seeing tourists come from are Ohio, Boston, New York and Chicago.
“They’ve come here to see what it’s all about, and they aren’t disappointed,” Brashier said.
Making a good impression on all these new visitors - and ensuring they come back - starts with the details, said Angie Prosser, Greenville’s director of public information and events. Parks crews tend to flower beds and commit tens of thousands of dollars annually caring for the tree canopy, she said.
“Those pansies don’t get there automatically,” Prosser said. “Somebody has to pull out the weeds and dead stuff.”
Prosser said the city has also made a point of providing pedestrians with a little surprise around every corner - from public art and plazas to the Liberty Bridge at Falls Park and the Swamp Rabbit Trail.
Meanwhile, people can also find their way around easily, said Clemson’s Norman.
“Greenville is known regionally for its signage,” Norman said. “Tourists, if they don’t know their way, spend a lot of time wandering around.”
Street crews empty scores of cigarette bins daily; blow leaves and debris off the sidewalks two or three times a week; scrub gum off the cement; and wipe down handrails, said Streets and Sidewalks Supervisor Ben Carroll. The work never ends: By the time crews finish a cleaning run from Beattie Place at the Hyatt to Markley Street at Fluor Field, the cans are full again.
Along with city workers, Stone credits the county’s more than 10,000 hospitality employees for helping increase the area’s popularity.
“That’s been the magic for us,” Stone said. “The workforce is giving people a great experience.”
Patrice Johnson, a welcome desk talent member at Greenville’s Aloft hotel, has worked at hotels for for more than 10 years. She commutes 20 to 30 minutes (one-way) from her home in Duncan to her job downtown. Her 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. shift gets her home in time to take care of her three children.
“To me, hospitality equals happiness,” Johnson said. “It’s something different every day.”
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Information from: The Greenville News, http://www.greenvillenews.com
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