{"id":1899,"date":"2022-01-21T19:20:44","date_gmt":"2022-01-21T19:20:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/?p=1899"},"modified":"2022-06-06T19:31:39","modified_gmt":"2022-06-06T19:31:39","slug":"meet-the-welcome-ambassadors-who-are-helping-visitors-and-buffing-sfs-battered-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/news\/meet-the-welcome-ambassadors-who-are-helping-visitors-and-buffing-sfs-battered-image\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Welcome Ambassadors Who are Helping Visitors and Buffing SF\u2019s Battered Image"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\"\"<\/div>\n
Written by<\/em>\u00a0Kevin Truong, The San Fransisco Standard<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
It wasn\u2019t hard to spot the family of tourists ascending the Powell Street Station escalator. Luggage in tow and squeezed between a busker banging on a makeshift drum set and a speaker blasting Sade\u2019s \u201cSmooth Operator\u201d the group stared at their phones quizzically as they emerged into the chaos of Market Street during the holidays.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Brian DeBellevue sprang into action. Decked out in a vivid orange jacket and baseball cap\u2014and with a smile that\u2019s hard to miss, even behind a mask\u2014he looked a bit like a walking traffic cone.<\/p>\n

After a quick greeting and a self-deprecating joke, DeBellevue pointed them to their Union Square hotel.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou get a sense pretty quickly of the people who really need you,\u201d DeBellevue said, miming a person buried in their smartphone map spinning around to figure out which way to walk. \u201cSometimes people are a little off put, but most of the time they\u2019re really thankful to have someone help them out.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeBellevue is one of the roughly 50 Welcome Ambassadors that have been hired to act as the front door greeters for San Francisco. They are responsible for welcoming people to the city, offering directions, taking photos, answering questions and functioning as a concierge for both visitors and residents alike.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe primary goal is to welcome people to the city, give information and help people feel comfortable and safe in San Francisco,\u201d said Rena Leddy, vice president of Urban Place Consulting Group, which was enlisted to help design the program. It\u2019s managed by Louisville, K.Y.-based Block by Block, which runs about 120 programs around the country.<\/p>\n

Paulita Elliott, director of operations at Block by Block, said the San Francisco program was unique in that ambassadors here, rather than being limited to a single main tourist district, are often assigned to multiple locations and take public transportation to travel between their postings.<\/p>\n

Click to see a day in the life of a Welcome Ambassador !<\/a><\/p>\n

The program formally\u00a0started in November\u00a0and has conducted more than 230,000 public greetings.<\/p>\n

The Welcome Ambassador program operates 7 days a week, between the hours of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., with ambassadors posted in key tourist areas like Fisherman\u2019s Wharf, Union Square and the Powell St. Cable Car Turnaround.<\/p>\n

Some of the initial hiccups in its rollout have stemmed from the lack of reliable public transit and retaining workers unprepared for the hospitality role or the physical nature of the job.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing outside in the Bay weather and walking 10 to 13 miles is not always what they think it is,\u201d Elliot said.<\/p>\n

The program is just one of several efforts to encourage more visitors to downtown and other tourist attractions. Other initiatives include\u00a0staffing tourist areas with police officers, another downtown ambassador program comprised of retired police officers, and beautification projects in and around Union Square.<\/p>\n

Mayor London Breed has positioned the effort as part of the gradual recovery of San Francisco\u2019s struggling tourism sector and a signal of safety to both residents and tourists.<\/p>\n

Moanna Sauleaupepetele, who was one of the program\u2019s first hires, said community members have started to recognize the ambassadors\u2019 presence and have taken to calling her and her colleagues \u201cthe orange people.\u201d<\/p>\n

The welcome ambassadors are funded through a two-year $12.5 million grant from the Office of Economic and Workforce Development to the San Francisco Tourism Improvement District, which is responsible for supporting SF Travel, the city\u2019s tourism agency.<\/p>\n

The ambassador\u2019s friendly presence aims to boost to a lagging tourism industry that has traditionally been one of the main drivers of the city\u2019s economy. San Francisco\u2019s hotel market has had the largest fall and the slowest recovery of any major metropolitan area in the U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cSan Francisco was one of the highest performing before the pandemic so it had farther to fall off,\u201d said Emmy Hise, the CoStar Group\u2019s director of hospitality analytics for the Western U.S. \u201cThey\u2019ve seen a huge loss in international travel and a very heavy group travel presence that hasn\u2019t come back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those macroeconomic factors have been compounded by a national media narrative that has painted a city in crisis and struggling with an overdose epidemic and street crime.<\/p>\n

\"San

Brian DeBellevue spends his day in San Francisco\u2019s tourist haunts sharing directions, travel tips or just a bit of conversation. | Photo by Mike Kuba<\/p><\/div>\n

There was little evidence of that story at the Powell St. cable car turnaround on a recent Thursday morning.<\/p>\n

The line for the city\u2019s iconic cable cars included local tourists marveling at the relative lack of crowds downtown, long-haired Dutch headbangers in town for Metallica\u2019s 40th anniversary concert and a visitor from India unfortunately named Kovid (\u201cI had the name 55 years earlier,\u201d he protested.)<\/p>\n

Ardis Young, a Campbell resident on her first trip back to San Francisco since the pandemic, said her group was struck by the prevalence of ambassadors and street cleaning teams near tourist haunts. They provided a contrast to some of the stories around street conditions and rampant crime she and her friends had seen on the local news.<\/p>\n

While the lack of crowds meant \u201ca different experience,\u201d she still relished the city\u2019s ability \u201cto unearth something new\u201d and mentioned the\u00a0Let\u2019s Glow SF\u00a0projection mapping display as a recent highlight.<\/p>\n

DeBellevue worked the line like a seasoned pro, combining information about Muni\u2019s smartphone app with bits of San Francisco trivia and teasing about this or that sports teams\u2019 prospects.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like to catch people when they\u2019re in line and get them laughing and having fun because it can get pretty defeating waiting an hour for something to go,\u201d DeBellevue said.<\/p>\n

The ambassadors are often confronted with the harsher realities faced by the city. On the walk between Powell Station and Union Square, DeBellevue hunched down to check on a man splayed out on a sidewalk vent.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do have a lot of interactions with the homeless population and we do welfare checks,\u201d DeBellevue said. \u201cOur job is to make sure everybody\u2019s good, it\u2019s not just about tourists, it\u2019s like every person has value and is seen. Just because you\u2019re on drugs or have whatever you got going on, it doesn\u2019t mean you don\u2019t have value or are not important.\u201d<\/p>\n

He recounted a recent experience he had helping a blind homeless man connect with services after he had received a housing voucher.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had this opportunity to get off the streets, so I helped him with that. I called 311, got him in touch with the correct channel and got him to the address,\u201d DeBellevue said. \u201cYou have no idea the amount of joy that that brought him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Each ambassador is given an Android device used as a walkie-talkie and for data collection around community engagement. The smartphone is loaded with apps that show the schedule for tour buses and public transportation and translation software for communication with non-English speakers.<\/p>\n

Ambassadors use their device to report data on their interactions with the public. The program\u2019s leaders say these metrics and forthcoming surveys are key to understanding the impact of the ambassadors and measuring their success.<\/p>\n

In his seven years in the city, DeBellevue has struggled with housing insecurity himself, relying on assistance from his mother and government relief to make ends meet. But the new role has provided him the rare opportunity to see the city anew.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen people come here they realize even the movies don\u2019t do it justice,\u201d DeBellevue said. \u201cWhen you see it with your own eyes, you\u2019re like \u2018wow, this place is incredible.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by\u00a0Kevin Truong, The San Fransisco Standard It wasn\u2019t hard to spot the family of tourists ascending the Powell Street Station escalator. Luggage in tow and squeezed between a busker banging on a makeshift drum set and a speaker blasting Sade\u2019s \u201cSmooth Operator\u201d the group stared at their phones quizzically as they emerged into the …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1899"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2200,"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1899\/revisions\/2200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blockbyblock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}