New on the job, and the roof falls in. How Gig Harbor’s tourism director sees the road back
Laura Pettitt-Roe had been on her new job as Gig Harbor’s Tourism and Marketing director for only a few weeks when the roof fell in.
The coronavirus crisis hit, and almost overnight tourism evaporated. Downtown businesses and restaurants closed, hundreds of service workers were thrown out of work, the city’s three hotels were nearly empty and, at times, you could shoot a cannon down Harborview Drive and not hit anyone.
But Pettitt-Roe is not ready to throw in the towel. As a veteran of the tourism industry in Seattle, Denver, New York and Los Angeles, she’s seen this movie before.
“I’ve worked through economic crises before,” she said in an interview last week. “I’ve been through 9/11. I’ve through the 2008 recession. The one constant is: We all want to come back. You look for ways to weather the storm.”
Hometown
Pettitt-Roe joined the city in April, returning to the town where she grew up. She’s a 1992 graduate of Gig Harbor High School who re-met — and married — an old boyfriend, Thomas Roe, who relocated here about the same time.
“When I came back to Gig Harbor, I was an incredible experience to see the growth, the forward thinking and the planning for the future that was going on here,” she said.
In an 18-year career, she’s worked for agencies that have represented big hotel chains like the Four Seasons and Z Resorts, airlines like Quantas, and government clients like the Barbados Tourist Agency.
She’s seen the airlines tank after 9/11 and the big destination hotels struggle in the 2008 recession.
“The travel industry absorbed the first shock, and I saw a lot of businesses collapse,” she recalled. “Fractional ownership in big hotels, for one, turned out to be unsustainable. The airlines had to start all over again encouraging people to travel.”
Thinking ahead
Things she learned then, though, show there’s hope, she said.
“In the short term, it’s very scary,” she said. “But then you have to start thinking ahead about what’s going to happen. Take right now. For one thing, gas prices are low. For another, air travel is going to be harder for a while.”
So the immediate focus for destination towns like Gig Harbor, she said, should be attracting short-distance travelers who come by car for a night or a day or a weekend.
She’s thinking about people who live in the “drive market” — which she defines as 50 to 100 miles, or “how long you can be in a car without the kids melting down.”
“We have a lot of people in the Puget Sound region who have never explored Gig Harbor,” she said. “And I think we are equal to if not greater than other drive destinations, such as Anacortes or Whidbey Island, or Port Townsend.”
For that matter, she adds, there are a lot of newcomers to Gig Harbor who have never really explored their own city.
And Tacoma, a stone’s throw across the Narrows, is a ready-made market, she points out.
“We have an opportunity to be a favored destination — ‘cross the bridge and spend a romantic weekend on the waterfront in Gig Harbor.’ “
A collective effort
Gig Harbor lacks any one big destination, like an amphitheater or a sports stadium, that could be a big-time tourist draw. But Pettitt-Roe sees that as an advantage.
“It means its a collective effort — downtown, uptown, restaurants, all those wonderful little shops, the museum, the parks, the waterfront — we’re all in this together. And to make it work, we have to collaborate.”
As the pandemic continues, the city and its businesses will have to be “in the mode of adjust and adapt,” she said. “it’s not just recovering from the initial crisis — this crisis is going to be ongoing. As we look at what restrictions are going to look like, we need to be innovative and creative.”
She cites some favorite examples: “Brix 25 restaurant, which will deliver a bottle of sparkling wine, candles, flowers and a dinner right to your home; or Java & Clay, which has put together a take-home paint kit, or the Harbor History Museum, which has put up a wonderful, clever web page called ‘Harbor Mysteries.’ ”
One of the Tourism and Marketing department’s challenges in coming weeks will be reviewing the city’s advertising and public relations efforts, Pettitt-Roe said. In the past, it has relied heavily on glossy print media, like the Alaska Airlines in-flight magazine, which has suspended publication. The city’s own Visitor’s Guide is in trouble, since most of the local advertisers have withdrawn.
“We’ll be looking at content development, targeted advertising, new media, social media — we’re looking into all of them,” said Pettitt-Roe
One thing she has learned in the business, she said, is that “with tourism, you don’t see results overnight, or even in six months. It takes continuity. It takes a sustained effort at getting the word out.”
And the word? “Come see us! “
This story was originally published May 12, 2020 at 10:46 AM.