Expedia ranks Yuma at No. 5

Travel site’s survey puts city among best in its class

Yuma has been ranked No. 5 in a survey by travel portal Expedia where “Americans pick the best destinations,” when small and medium-sized communities are considered.

The survey, released on Thursday, made waves at the Visit Yuma offices as soon as it was posted Tuesday on their Facebook page. Executive Director Linda Morgan said the art was quickly shared by residents who appeared to be excited about the implications for the city.

“It makes us like a tourist attraction, it makes us like a destination. Whereas people were thinking of Yuma as a pass-through community, this really lets us know that it’s a destination, a place where people are setting out and looking to us, to fulfill their outdoor adventure needs, their need for sunshine, and authenticity,” he said.

Cape Cod, Mass., topped Expedia’s list of the top 25 places, with skiing and celebrity hub Aspen, Colo. coming in right behind Yuma at #6. No other Arizona communities made it onto the list.

“It puts us up there in the top five, is that true?” asked Allen Armstrong, coowner of the Castle Dome City ghost town and mining museum 30 miles northeast of the city of Yuma. “That’s pretty great.”

His attraction, which recently added tours of the adjacent Hull Mine to its offerings, was one of two singled out by Expedia writer Chloe Mulliner. The tour highlights an underground wall of phosphorescent minerals which emerge in brilliant color when ultraviolet light shines on them, and have proven popular since they began in January.

He said “hundreds” of

people have taken the $75 tour. “We’re pretty booked, I’m really kind of actually surprised,” he said. “Everybody’s thought it’s fair, and it’s great, and one woman said it’s the most beautiful thing she’s seen in her life, that was pretty cool. They don’t have words to describe it.”

The other destination mentioned is Yuma River Tubing, which offers raftborne cruises up and down the Colorado River.

Yuma River manager Vanessa Pyle said that business operates through the summer months, the opposite of the peak winter season, but generally starts up in February or March to serve groups of winter visitors, many of whom are locals.

This year’s “official” season will begin the first Saturday in April, she said. “In the summer, there’s really not much to do, and what’s more relaxing than going into the river and having some wine or water, or whatever, and floating down the Colorado River?” she said.

She added, “It’s a good business, it keeps growing every year.”

Mulliner, who has visited and researched Yuma, praised the community for one of its best-known attributes: “the world’s sunniest city. With more than 4,000 hours of sunlight each year, and warm temperatures to boot, this desert city feels like the eternal summer spot you’ve been longing for.”

Kimberly Deese, an Expedia spokeswoman, said the website’s Viewfinder blog surveyed 1,000 users last June by asking them, among other things, “What is your favorite city in the U.S. to visit?” The top finishers included Miami, Las Vegas and New York, and were mentioned in an October article about “American travel habits revealed.”

The more recent article focused on the small- and mid-sized travel destinations which were mentioned by the respondents, ranking them by how many times they were mentioned. Respondents were asked to give the name of their favorite cities, without specifying why they liked to go there.

Word of high hotel occupancy rates has been getting around town, with some of the city’s few dozen hotels booked solid.

Yvonne Peach, co-owner of the historic Coronado Motor Hotel in Yuma, said business has been good this winter season at her location on the north end of 4th Avenue, but she’s not easily impressed.

“It’s better this year than it was last year, for us. But it can always be better, as the old saying goes,” she said, adding that the motel is still building up from when it ended its Best Western affiliation in 2014.

“When there are events on the weekend we all fill up, that’s the way it is. It’d be nice if the events were scattered around a little bit on the weekends that aren’t as busy,” she said. “But I think the whole town has always thought that way, we have so much going in February, and then comes March and April it kind of dies down. But we all stay fairly busy, it’s just not the same as February,” she said.

The cumulative effect last month of events like the Southwest Ag Summit, Harvest Dinner and Lettuce Festival, Yuma Proving Ground’s 75th anniversary celebration and other happenings can be somewhat deceptive, she said. “Sometimes people think ‘oh, it’s so busy, we’ll have to build another hotel.’ But the thing is you can’t support a hotel for just one month or two months a year, and that’s what it really amounts to.”

But Yuma Mayor Doug Nicholls said there currently are plans for two more in Yuma, the Hilton Home2 Suites at 1st Street and Madison Avenue and another which has not announced its exact location yet. He did say it will be “around where the other hotels are, it won’t be a new area of town.”

Another hotel, as yet unnamed, is expected to be built in the unincorporated Foothills area, on Fortuna Road south of Interstate 8, and another could come to the east side of the city of San Luis.

Nicholls said Yuma’s top employers also help boost the hotel occupancy rate. “The Top 5 just shows the work the community has been doing is really paying off. The occupancy rate is just one indication things are going extremely well. A lot of the credit goes to the federal government and contractors that come in, but the weekend, that occupancy is really driven by tourism,” he said.

Morgan also said the community’s new visibility is the result of a team effort. “Yuma as a whole is just so collaborative, and is working so well together. And I think that really tells the story. GYEDC, Chamber of Commerce, the Caballeros, the visitor’s bureau. We’re all working together to promote each other and promote events, and just promote Yuma. And it’s really working,” she said.

The result is about $600 million extra in the local economy, she added.

“That equates to jobs, I think 6,000 jobs, and the tax dollars we collect are tax dollars we don’t have to collect ourselves, and so it’s really good for the economy. Tourism’s a relatively clean industry, we don’t use a lot of resources, and it helps us to take care of parks for our kids to play in, and the arts, and maintaining all of the riverfront,” she said. “Everything we do to attract visitors to Yuma are also things that make Yuma a better place to live.