From Oz to WeHo: Aussie Tourists Fill Local Hotels

Today, Visit West Hollywood keeps a Sydney-based representative year-round to help drum up buzz, and Burlingame said other local hotels, in addition to the Ramada, are also establishing a regular presence in cities like Sydney.

However, when it comes to Aussies in WeHo, the Ramada still “dwarfs what the other hotels get,” said Burlingame, whose organization conducts informal surveys on visitor stats with area hotels. According to Johnson and others at the Ramada, Australians make up anywhere from 50 to 65 percent of all guests, depending on the season.

“This place has a strong Australian connection,” said Ken Ryan, a visitor from Melbourne staying at the Ramada and friend of Johnson, who described him as a rather prominent “hotelier” back home.

“He’s quite well-known in Australia, in Melbourne especially,” Ryan said.

The hotel gets its fair share of business from Victoria, Melbourne’s home state, and while the close-knit travel agent industry brings a lot of business, so does word of mouth. “Melbourne is a place where people network a lot,” he said.

Anthony and Terry Barrett, from suburban Melbourne, recently visited West Hollywood with their two teenaged children as part of a month-long excursion to the United States. Their travel agent gave them a choice of three hotels near the Sunset Strip before they double-checked reviews on the website TripAdvisor. They settled on the Ramada.

“It’s near the Sunset Strip and it’s sort of in the middle of everything,” Terry Barrett said.

One Ramada visitor from Perth, Australia, David (who did not want to give his last name), also learned of the hotel from his travel agent and wasn’t at all surprised by the marketing muscle Johnson puts into his hotel. In fact, he says, that’s par for the course. “If you book through an Australian travel agent, they’re going to push you to Australian businesses,” he said.

According to Burlingame, West Hollywood has only benefited from the outreach to Australia.

“In the beginning some on our board were skeptical, very much against developing the market, but we were obviously successful persuading them it was worthwhile,” he said. “Over the years, that’s become an understatement.”