Every July the residents of Coronado look across San Diego Bay at over 100,000 people descending on the convention center for Comic-Con. They jam up downtown San Diego and create a hotel shortage as far away as Mission Valley. For 5 days they make traveling by trolley a miserable experience and make it impossible to find a cab. Yet here sits Coronado, a couple hundred yards away, completely untouched by all of it. They spend $163 million dollars during Comic-Con, but I don’t think they spend enough of it in Coronado. Here are some ideas and thoughts to bring some of that money across the bridge to Coronado, along with some questions to generate more ideas:
Basic idea: Pitch Coronado to the Comic-Con crowd as a place to stay and play.
Why Coronado is a better choice:
1. It’s just a single bus ride away OR a ferry ride away
a. What about a shuttle from downtown Coronado to the convention center during the con? A privately funded deal would be awesome. Same thing with the ferry.
2. It’s nicer than downtown & closer than Mission Valley
3. Great restaurants AND the beach
4. Water recreation
5. If you want to do stuff OTHER than Comic-Con while in SD, Coronado is a vacation within the vacation.
See about bringing the Hotels & restaurants of Coronado into partnerships with the Comic-Con crowd for special room rates, food discounts and package deals for other recreation stuff on Coronado.
What other packages & bundles would entice con people to come to Coronado? What are some cool perks Coronado could provide to a con person that are totally unique AND awesome for a con person? What would make a comic-con person go crazy that’s unique to Coronado? Maybe every hotel room includes a free bicycle rental and/or Wi-Fi for the duration of their stay.
Partner up with San Diego airport, Hotwire type site or individual airlines to get special (exclusive) airfare and shuttles for con people staying on Coronado.
Leaning on SDMTS to offer special, $15 five day transit passes for any San Diegan or Comic-Con person for the duration would be HUGE. Failing that, finding a way to subsidize con peoples transit passes would also be huge.
Make the comic-con people feel welcome with some sort of “Coronado for Comic-Con” atmosphere with some signage, maybe landing an after hour party or two, etc.
The convention is still 11 months away so there’s plenty of time to get the heavy-hitters of Comic-Con involved. The last 2 years I’ve gone as a member of the press, so please look at my photos from 2010 Comic-Con and photos from 2011 Comic-Con. All the people in those photos need a place to unwind, decompress and spend their money from 6 p.m. until 9 a.m. the following day, for 5 straight days. Pitch Coronado to them, and they will come. Cheers!
