Plodding. That's how some economists describe California’s recovery five years after the official end of the Great Recession. All this week, K-P-C-C and Capital Public Radio are bringing you stories from around the state — on the challenges Californians face getting back on their feet. We’re calling our series “Fits and Starts.” Today, KPCC’s Brian Watt looks at tourism in Los Angeles and Orange County. The industry took a beating during the recession but has come back even stronger.
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That’s the sound of a cappuccino being made the old-fashioned way at the Coffee Corner in LA’s Original Farmers Market. The 80 year old open-air market is a landmark for locals, but it’s also one of the top stops made by many tourists from all over the world. Coffee Corner owner Lillian Sears says over the years, she’s adjusted to different drinking habits.
Sears: “Because we normally serve our coffee and ask people to go to the tables and sit down. Italians won’t do it, they will stand right there and sip their coffee right in front of my counter, so I’ve learned not to bother them.”
Sears started working at the Coffee Corner 30 years ago. Fifteen years later, she bought the business from her boss. During the Great Recession, she thought she might lose it.
Sears: “Yes, I was very scared.”
Sears had to lay off three of her seven employees and put a lot of expenses on credit cards. She made 12 pastries per day, instead of the normal 50 to 75. She says the other merchants in the market were feeling it, too.
Sears: “We would just look at each other and kind of shake our heads and say ‘What’s happening? What’s going on?’ We were here in the morning and no customers!”
Don Skeoch: “It was pretty miserable, not just for Los Angeles, but for the entire country.”
Don Skeoch is the Chief Marketing Officer of the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board. He says LA’s number of annual visitors started to dip in 2008…
Skeoch: “And the term ‘Stay-cation’ was coined right around 2009 as the business really fell out in tourism and people started to stay closer to home.”
That year, he says, 34 and half million people visited the Los Angeles area, a drop of 2 million visitors from the year before.
The recession wasn’t tough all over Southern California tourism. In Orange County, Disneyland, one of the top attractions in the region, actually saw its attendance grow, says Vice President Mary Niven:
Niven: “Even during the recession when people were perhaps not taking long vacations away, we were a great place for families to be able to get away for a day or two.”
Disneyland cashed in on the stay-cation, and pushed forward with a billion dollar expansion of the California Adventure theme park. And since 2007, its workforce has grown about a quarter to more than 26,000 people.
Niven: “What’s really terrific is not only are a lot of those roles guest facing roles, but we’ve also been able to expand hiring in more skilled roles whether it’s engineering, marketing, finance.”
During the recovery, the leisure and hospitality sector — which includes Tourism — has regularly been among the top job creators in Los Angeles and Orange Counties.
A lot of those jobs are entry-level low paying jobs. Economist Chris Thornberg of Beacon Economics says that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because LA County has a large share of low-skilled workers who need the opportunity.
Thornberg: “This recovery has been marked by very slow progress in the labor markets for low skilled workers – largely because in many other sectors, their former jobs have been replaced by information technology. Leisure and hospitality, face it, we’re never going to have a computer cook food; we’re never going to have a computer run the front desk at a hotel or clean the room when you’re done.”
This year, the LA Tourism and Convention Board expects a record 43.2 million visitors – a million more than last year. But by 2020, it expects 50 million annual visitors. Los Angeles will need thousands more hotel rooms to accommodate them.
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But Lillian Sears at the Coffee Corner is looking for another kind of room — counter space. In addition to coffee and pastries, she now sells lemonade — herbal and peach…
Sears: “And they are insane. They sell like crazy. And it’s like ‘Oh my god, where can I put another one with a watermelon lemonade and a blueberry lemonade…”
Business is booming. And of the three employees she had to let go during the recession, she’s hired two of them back…and would gladly rehire the third. …
Sears: “…Or a bigger display for my baked goods because you know, I can make a lot more muffins than that…”
I'm Brian Watt.
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This story was produced by Capital Public Radioand KPCC