No Parking in Sonoma-That’s a Good Thing
I had a meeting yesterday on the Plaza in the Town of Sonoma yesterday. It took me five minutes to find a place to park and ended up having to walk quite a distance to get to the business on the plaza at which I was meeting.
THIS IS GOOD NEWS!
Clearly the tourists are back in Sonoma and in Sonoma County as a whole. And you can tell it’s tourists who are taking all my parking spaces. They are wearing those cute, loopy shorts, are holding a small map in their hand, and the man is pointing off into the distance while his female companion is shaking her head and shrugging her shoulders.
It was recently reported that Tourism was a $1 Billion business in Sonoma County. In 2003 over 7 million visitors to the county were responsible for more than 15,000 jobs and an annual payroll of over $327 million.
The report produced by consulting firm Economy.com detailed tourism’s impact in Sonoma County noting that wine is the main reason so many are coming to the county to spend money and leisure time. They caution however that wine tourism is particularly vulnerable to slowdowns in disposable income spending.
My services at Wark Communications are certainly linked to the health of tourism in wine country. When more people come to wine country the wineries sell more wine, they spend more on marketing, and more of them call me.
So you’ll understand why we have no problem at all having to look for a parking space for 5 minutes and walking a distance to get to a meeting.
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