Berkeley makes tourism push

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Berkeley-makes-tourism-push-3711675.php

Berkeley is moving to promote itself as one of the Bay Area's top tourist draws, a lively, eclectic college town with endless choices for food and culture just a short BART ride from San Francisco.

The City Council will consider a 1 percent assessment on hotel revenue Tuesday night, on top of the 12 percent hotel tax that visitors already pay. That would raise $400,000 a year, doubling the city's annual tourism budget and bringing it on par with what Monterey and Sonoma spend.

"People all over the world know Berkeley, but its branding as a tourist destination historically has been weak," said Laura Bourret, manager of the Berkeley City Club, a historic, 35-room inn just south of UC Berkeley. "People come here expecting bra-burning demonstrations, wild-eyed professors. ... What they don't know, maybe, is that Berkeley has some of the best theater and dining in the world."

Thousands of out-of-towners - from Cal parents to alumni to visiting Nobel laureates - already come to Berkeley for the university, the laboratories and football games. But because the city has relatively few hotel rooms - 1,500, compared with more than 60,000 in San Francisco - visitors tend to breeze through and stay elsewhere.

Also, Berkeley has the issue of, well, being Berkeley. What some affectionately call "funky," such as the street scene on Telegraph Avenue, others might view as slightly off-putting.

"We get people who say they came to Berkeley to see hippies. They say, 'I want to see People's Park,' " Hillman said. "I'm like, 'Why?'

"If you're looking for strawberry fields and a nice place to have your lunch," Hillman said, "as a courtesy we need to let them know it's probably not what they're expecting."

That's what drew Debra Hartman, a welder from Grand Rapids, Mich., to Berkeley on a recent sunny morning. Her daughter had a microbiology conference in Berkeley, so Hartman and her husband decided to tag along. The 59-year-old had never been to Berkeley before.

On her agenda: buy a Berkeley T-shirt, visit pottery studios and see hippies.

"I wanted to see the Haight-Ashbury," she said. "But they said there's some really good galleries here. I want to look at some pottery.

"What do I think of Berkeley so far? I love it. Everyone's really nice. I'm taking lots of pictures."