It was another disastrous week for the Niagara Tourism and Convention Corp., which gets $3 million in public money to promote tourism each year, but found itself unable to compete with a private, unsubsidized company on a big state contract.
Majestic Tours, a tourism operation owned by Doreen O'Connor, outbid the NTCC with its proposal to operate the tourist information centers at the Clarence and Angola rest stops along the New York State Thruway. It marks the first time in 30 years that a private company has won the contract.
Majestic will now have the opportunity to sell tours and hotel rooms on a commission basis to visitors who haven't made such arrangements before getting in their cars.
"This is absolutely unbelievable," state Sen. George Maziarz told the Reporter. "You've got a state agency, one that is subsidized by the taxpayers to the tune of $3 million a year, and they can't even manage to outbid a private company on a contract awarded by another state agency? I don't know what they're doing over there."
Perhaps if the NTCC's director, John Percy, didn't spend so much of his time globetrotting on the taxpayers' dime, he added, the agency might have been able to submit a more competitive bid.
Percy recently returned from an extended stay in exotic India, which he claimed would spur tourism from that country.
"We were treated like royalty," Percy told a presumably stunned reporter from the Buffalo News on his return.
According to Percy, the NTCC sold 3,600 hotel stays through the two information centers last year, and actually loses money running the operation.
"It's comical on quite a number of levels," said one local tourism veteran, who asked not to be identified. "The NTCC is so badly run that it can't even turn a profit on the sale of hotel rooms. The truth is that you could spend all day in downtown Niagara Falls talking to people involved in the hospitality industry and find that a great percentage of them don't even know who John Percy is."
What Percy seems to be best at is convincing gullible politicians to give him more money. Recently, he appeared before the Niagara Falls City Council in order to justify the NTCC's receipt of $1 million annually from the city's share of the Seneca Niagara Casino payment, in addition to 100 percent of the money collected by the city through the hotel bed tax.
While he claimed that hotel occupancy had risen by 7.6 percent in 2007 from 2006, he failed to mention that five downtown hotels had closed, and none of the deep thinkers on the Council thought to ask why, if that many more tourists were renting rooms here, the amount collected in bed tax remained virtually unchanged.
But the loss of the state Thruway contract wasn't the only bad news for downtown tourism last week, as the Taste of Niagara Festival, a gala event styled after the Taste of Buffalo celebration in that city, had a stake driven through its heart due to a squabble between the city and the state, which couldn't agree about who was responsible for liability protection.
The two-day event was to have featured food provided by top restaurants throughout Western New York, live music and fun in a downtown district that has been devoid of anything other than sun-baked concrete or pouring rain for the entire summer.
The event was begun four years ago in Lockport, growing to the point where the amenities offered by the county seat could no longer contain it. Promoter Richard Hoose then made the fateful decision to bring it to Niagara Falls, where he believed an even greater opportunity existed.
Bands were booked and vendors lined up for what promised to be the biggest event of the year in the city.
An agreement was reached with Joe Anderson to hold the event along the East Pedestrian Mall, whose control of vending rights along the city walkway has been the subject of an FBI investigation now dragging into its fifth year.
But unknown to Hoose, the state's USA Niagara Development Corp. was in negotiations with Anderson to buy the property. While incompetent state officials have refused to confirm or deny the negotiations are taking place, they refused Hoose's request for permission to hold the event, telling the promoter he'd have to get permission from the city.
The agency's list of directors and advisory council contains the names of many of the usual suspects involved in holding up progress here, including Percy, state Rep. Francine Del Monte, Maid of the Mist honcho Jimmy Glynn, City Historian Tom Yots, Joan Aul of M&T Bank and Mayor Paul Dyster.
Hoose then took his request to the city, where nothing whatsoever was done about it. While Dyster and rookie City Administrator Donna Owens were supportive, he said, the result was the same. The promoter said he will try again next year.
Why the city and state, both of which receive millions of dollars to promote tourism and attract visitors to Niagara Falls each year, cannot combine to manage to pull off a single well-run summer event downtown when second-tier towns such as Lockport, North Tonawanda and Lewiston have hosted successful events on their own for years is a question no one here seems to be able to answer.
On any given weekend, the hotels are full of tourists looking for something to do, and thousands of city residents regularly drive to Buffalo or one of the other outlying towns and cities to attend events staged with the help of government officials who don't possess a fraction of the resources available to their Niagara Falls counterparts.
And as far as can be determined, John Percy is the only person in the city associated with tourism who will tell you that things are better than ever. And his salary, which is roughly three times that of the mayor, depends on you believing it.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | July 29 2008 |