Simi attempts to lure tourists
Chamber considers a bureau to tout attractions

By Teresa Rochester, trochester@VenturaCountyStar.com
January 20, 2006

There are seven ways in and out of Simi Valley.

The Chamber of Commerce hopes that visitors become familiar with all of them.

After spending last year urging residents to shop local, the Simi Valley chamber is turning outward in an effort to generate tourism to the city.

To do this, the chamber wants to create a tourism bureau.

"The purpose of the tourism bureau is to basically get people to show up in our community," said Colleen Janssen, who is spearheading the effort. "The key thing, we find people from outside of California are sometimes afraid to come here. One of the things we have to offer is we're a safe place to stay."

There's also the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, which Janssen and other volunteers hope to use as bait.

The proposed tourism bureau is still in its infancy. The chamber's first committee meeting on the topic was Thursday morning at the Grand Vista Hotel.

The project is the brainchild of Janssen, who served as architect of the Shop Simi Valley program, and the chamber's chief executive officer Leigh Nixon, who has tourism bureau experience from stints in Santa Clarita and Temecula.

The women have been gathering information from a number of cities, considering what works and what doesn't.

Some of the ideas that they are considering are a visitor guide or map, a Web site and event guide, a list of 101 things to do in Simi Valley, freeway signage for a possible visitors center and a "1-800" number for tourists to call.

To drum up interest among travel agents, the group is considering a "land cruise," which would be akin to the familiarization tour offered each year to movie and television industry location scouts. The tour would point out places of interest that agents could pitch to their clients.

Several of Simi Valley's selling points are its proximity to traditional tourist lures, such as Hollywood, Disneyland and the beach.

At the same time, the city is home to the Reagan Library, the new Town Center shopping mall, miles of hiking trails, a number of film locations and annual events ranging from the street fair to the annual Cajun Festival.

"We want to brand ourselves with who we are," Janssen said. "We're not just Air Force One. We're not just the mall."

The chamber's phone has been ringing off the hook with callers near and far for both of those venues, Nixon said.

The bureau would likely be funded through dues paid by the people who serve on it. Janssen suggested $100 a year and, with that, paying members would be highlighted in a visitors guide and in the chamber's publications.

Brian Gabler, Simi Valley's economic development director and assistant city manager, suggested that the bureau capitalize on the city's uniqueness.

"Show that it's really a valley and show that it's not just a suburb of Los Angeles," he said. "It's very unique. It's very rare to have a defined area."