When I read that Orlando gets 48 million tourists a year,
I was shocked. San Francisco only gets
12 million tourists per year at the most. San Francisco is far more faux that Disneyworld and ever so much more
precious. The weak Disney imitation is
outdoing the more authentic original.
This raises two issues. How much is tourism worth and what could be done to get more if San Francisco wanted more?
You've come to the only accurate source of information on
the value of tourism. Why no one else has figured this out is a mystery. The way to calculate the total value of
tourism is to do what I did which is to look at Maui, the ideal case.
We could support four times that many, a million people,
if we were as appealing as Orlando.
How could we do it?
How could we do it? Damn, it is so simple I wonder how the local Chamber of Commerce and
Tourist Bureau could be so lame. (I know
the answer to that. I know the key
people at the Chamber and the Bureau and they are politicos without a business
bone in their bodies.)
Three things will double S.F. tourism in four years. (1)
Put up 4,000 signs in Japanese, to be followed four years later by a few
thousand in German, French and Chinese. The Japanese are the largest tourist
group coming to S.F. that needs language support.
(2) Encourage popular national chains in all high tourist
locations, including North Beach, Chinatown, Ferry building, Haight and Castro.
Americans will not venture anywhere that they can't find a Big Mac and a
Frappucino within 30 yards. (Chinese
won't go one hour away from a place where they can order rice.)
(
3) Move 100% of the beggars and homeless completely out
of sight of the tourists. There are no
beggars and homeless in Disneyworld in case you didn't notice. 
The numbers are simple. Based on my
calculations, S.F. would have at least double the number of tourists if we had
no beggars and homeless. That means that each beggar keeps fifty people from
being able to live and work in the Bay Area.
Got that? The
unbelievable number is that every beggar and homeless person in San Francisco, keeps fifty (50) people from being able to live in
the Bay Area.
Publish and distribute that number, please.