SDSU Researchers Study U.S. Open's Financial Impact on San Diego

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published June 12, 2008 at 5:40 AM PDT

This story was published more than 15 years ago.

About 30 San Diego State University researchers will mingle with the crowds at the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines today. They are gathering data on the event's economic impact. KPBS reporter Alison St John

SDSU Researchers Study U.S. Open's Financial Impact on San Diego

About 30 San Diego State University researchers will mingle with the crowds at the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines today. They are gathering data on the event's economic impact. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

The SDSU survey aims to interview one in every one hundred visitors, to find out where they come from, and how much they are spending while they are here.

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Carl Winston is head of SDSU's School of Hospitality and Tourism Management. He says the organizers of the Golf Tournament commissioned the survey in the hopes it will show the city's investment pays off.

Winston: The city's made, in a tough financial time, a pretty significant investment in this fire and police protection, there are traffic officers all over, they've spent millions on the course to bring it up to speed. You know any time one of these major events causes havoc to the city's infrastructure, the people who produce these events want to prove that it's worth doing.

Winston says hotels on Torrey Pines Mesa are packed, but he's heard anecdotal reports that bookings at some La Jolla restaurants are down, with customers scared away by the potential crowds.

However Winston says he expects the international TV coverage of the U.S. Open in San Diego to have a positive indirect impact on tourism in San Diego in the long term.

Alison St John KPBS News.

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.