As the punchy sounds of flamenco guitar and jazz piano start to fill venues around town for the 25th annual Savannah Music Festival, a record number of visitors may also be filling up hotels.
Rob Gibson, executive director of the festival, said 11,800 hotel rooms were booked during the 2013 season and he expects to exceed that number this year.
“We think we might do more than 12,000 rooms this year, and the reason is that we’ve got record ticket sales. We’re going to make our numbers (and) we’ve raised more money than we’ve ever raised,” Gibson said Thursday during the Tourism Leadership Council’s monthly luncheon at 45 Bistro.
He said the festival had sold $1.5 million in tickets and raised another $2 million for a total budget of $3.5 million.
“We’re finally starting to see the economic impact,” said Gibson. “We want to fill hotels; we want to fill restaurants.”
The 17-day festival is the largest musical event in the state, according to Gibson, and second only to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Savannah Marathon in hotel room bookings.
He said one of the most rewarding parts of the festival for him, besides connecting artists to audiences, was educating younger children.
“If we’re going to change this community ... change the next generation of young people, we have to do it, in at least in the arts, by educating them,” said Gibson.
He said the music industry today is a much more negative one, pushing what he called “horrible, misogynistic rap and hip hop music on the world.”
A music education program beginning this fall in conjunction with Carnegie Hall will expose area grade-schoolers to an array of musical styles in the winter and again in the spring for three consecutive years.
“Over the course of kindergarten, first grade and second grade, you can hear 18 different musical groups by the time you’re out of second grade at a free concert,” said Gibson.
Savannah is the first pilot program to partner with Carnegie Hall in an effort modeled after their Musical Explorers program in New York City.
Gibson spoke moments before hopping on his bicycle to go introduce a flamenco and jazz performance.
Asked about the chances of getting into one of the sold-out performances, Gibson said it never hurts to come by and wait for a seat to open up from a no-show.
Chatham Area Transit
The second speaker at the TLC meeting Thursday was Ramond Robinson, chief development officer at Chatham Area Transit, who discussed the service’s five-year business plan.
Robinson said the newer airport shuttles and CAT Bikes were two examples of how their programs help tourism.
“Mobility management is a little bit different from just a bus company or bike company,” said Robinson. “Mobility management impacts economic development, business development, you name it, it impacts it.”
He said cities with stronger multi-modal transit systems realized higher gains in economic vitality and higher hotel performance. Additionally, hotels and attractions within closer proximity to multi-modal transit centers also fared better, in good economic times and bad, according to Robinson.
“Every tourist population has to have job access,” said Robinson. “You have to (transport) people that are service workers, office workers to move things forward.”
One questioner asked about the possibility of extending CAT’s bus hours until after businesses are closed downtown. Robinson said expanded hours is something they’d like to do but would need to make sure they had enough support for it.
“If you have a city that has the mobility and infrastructure to support people being able to move around, that usually means there’s going to be some economic gains and benefits,” said Robinson.