By Dan Schlossberg
ConsumerAffairs.com
April 8, 2006
Atlanta may not have any oceanfront but its new Georgia Aquarium is on pace to draw more fans than the Braves.
Unlike the baseball team, which plays in a 10-year-old stadium in a shady side of town, the aquarium is the new kid on the block. In the first 98 days after its opening last Nov. 23, it drew more than a million curious spectators.
Billed as the world's largest aquarium, the Atlanta facility holds eight million gallons of water and 100,000 fish and sea creatures. That dwarfs Chicago's Shedd Aquarium, which has five million gallons and 20,000 fish.
Special features include five beluga whales in an 800,000-gallon tank and the only North American exhibit of whale sharks - the world's largest fish.
Located near the popular High Museum of Art, the aquarium is helping to spark a tourist boom in Atlanta.
According to Spurgeon Richardson, president and CEO of the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau, "The product is unbelievable. It's drawing many people downtown.
"People come downtown to see the CNN Center, have dinner, walk around Centennial Olympic Park, and see the Children's Museum."
The city got a big boost when many meetings, plus the college football Sugar Bowl, were transferred to Atlanta from New Orleans. The city also draws weekend drive-in visitors from such nearby destinations as South Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama.
In addition to the enormous aquarium, out-of-towners often take the "Inside CNN" tour, fresh from a $5.5 million facelift that made it interactive; the World of Coca-Cola, featuring products and samples from the soft-drink giant; and the High Museum, set to unveil an exhibit borrowed from the Louvre later this year.
Local officials agree that word-of-mouth about the aquarium is the primary factor in the city's largest tourist boom since the 1996 Olympics.
Expedia.com spokesman David Dennis, reporting a major increase in Atlanta hotel bookings between December 2005 and February 2006, certainly feels that way.
"There have been healthy increases in the number of weekend nights booked from people in neighboring states as well as a lot of business travelers bringing their families and spending a long weekend in Atlanta," he said.
The success of the Braves, seeking their 15th straight divisional championship, hasn't hurt either.
Aquarium boosters had hoped for an annual attendance of two million but now believe they will top three million. The Braves can only hope to do that well.
