Working hard to keep tourist visits short

Many cities and towns could take a hint from Santa Fe about how to shorten tourists’ visits to their city. Santa Fe’s a great place to visit, simply because it is so different; but many visitors I’ve talked to don’t plan to stay here very long. Why are we so successful in encouraging visitors to move along? Here are some of the secrets to our success:

Limit the number of benches in the Plaza area so that tourists won’t hang around the center of town. We like to discourage people from spending too much time soaking up the atmosphere, because they might overwhelm the businesses around the Plaza. We don’t want overcrowded shops and restaurants down there.

Spend a lot of money providing free shuttle buses but make sure the bus stops are as inconspicuous as possible — put the bus stop signs up 10 feet high so pedestrians won’t even notice them; and then, don’t provide benches at the stops so people will want to wait around for the free ride.

Charge tour groups a fee to enter St. Francis Auditorium at the New Mexico Museum of Art. After all, if they get excited by the murals they see in the public hall, they might want to actually go in to see all the art in the museum, and we don’t want our art museum overrun by tourists.

Provide no public restrooms downtown so people have to go foraging in hotels, shops and arcades to find relief. This adds to their adventure in the uncivilized Wild West.

Make public parking as expensive as possible. This is a great way to encourage vacationers traveling by car to make their visit to Santa Fe as brief as possible.

Maintain the secret that Lamy is the train stop for Santa Fe. Any sign saying “Lamy-Santa Fe” might encourage visitors to alight at the Lamy station for the short ride into the city; better to divert Santa Fe-bound passengers through Albuquerque. And by all means, preserve the dirt road and dirt parking lot at the dilapidated station so passengers know they’ve arrived at a desert dead end.

Make air passengers pass by a junkyard to get to and from the Santa Fe airport to downtown; it helps promote the appearance that we are in a Third World country.

Yes, let’s all work together to discourage tourism in Santa Fe.