By John Paul Valdez
To everyone outside of the Coachella Valley, this area is known as Palm Springs. It doesn’t bother most visitors that we have townships all up and down the valley. At the heart of all the new excitement in the new Coachella Valley is resurgent Palm Springs which is currently enjoying a real boom in economic activity.
Some of this shows signs of forming a more permanent base and real long term growth. This year had the largest Coachella Music Festival ever. Even spread over two weekends instead of one weekend seemed to make little or no difference on demand. Both weekends were enormously successful. Dinah Shore before that, and Stagecoach and White Party afterwards were all the biggest they’ve ever been.
This past weekend promised to be the slowest in a series of five or six sell out weekends, but that wasn’t the case. The black tie at the O’Donnell Golf Course and the Gay Rodeo had the whole city a buzz again with restaurants and hotels as busy as ever. Several prominent weddings were also having events around town.
People often forget that a wedding includes about 5 separate events. The showers, the rehearsal dinner, the civil ceremony, the religious one, the reception and other related events are all often booked at separate venues and that means more economic stimulus to the area as well. I have seen several bachelorette parties around town at booked restaurants seeing their girlfriends off into married life with a fantastic send-off party.
What is also true is that the demographics of our population are spreading out. Formerly the domain of the elderly, retired, and snowbird vacation spot that split the city into a seasonal destination, the newer demographic is younger and hipper and reflects that groups of younger people pick the valley. This is especially true if they are choosing between a more expensive Sand Diego or Los Angeles.
AirBnB picked Palm Springs as the third most popular destination in the US for summer 2014. That’s amazing when you think that larger cities and places like Miami are competing for those visitors. UBER and other new businesses are making the valley cities all much more accessible as well.
With the economy in general picking up, we may have a new boom in the Palm Springs area not seen for about ten years, and very welcome indeed. Everywhere from DHS to Coachella seems to be enjoying a piece of that better economic outlook, not so much from fantastic city management, but from being at the right place at the right time. Some of the best things happening here in the valley are run or backed by those who have come here from elsewhere to make their home in this welcome destination, and that is very good news indeed for everyone who makes this their home or their favorite vacation spot.
Please send your questions and comments to: JohnPaulValdez@gmail.com
