BUSINESS WATCH:

Gary Sherwin wasn’t a huge fan of “The O.C.,” the Fox drama that portrayed the hectic lives of wealthy teenagers in Newport Beach. And last summer, when MTV debuted its reality show “Newport Harbor: The Real Orange County,” Sherwin didn’t cancel any longtime plans to stay home and watch it.

But the president of Newport Beach’s Conference and Visitors Bureau can’t deny one thing: Those programs, whatever their artistic merit, help to spread the city’s name around the world. And as his group prepares to bolster its international marketing this year, that free publicity couldn’t come at a better time.

“I’m not a fan of the show per se,” Sherwin said about “The O.C.,” which ended its run last year. “I don’t think the content is all that good. What I am a fan of is that it has some beautiful footage of Newport Beach scattered throughout the show, and those images do permeate people’s consciousness of what the community looks and feels like. You can’t buy that kind of exposure.”

In other ways, though, Newport Beach and its business leaders have bought plenty of exposure for 2008. The Irvine Co.’s Resort at Pelican Hill, a Newport Coast destination that will be the most elaborate of its kind in the region, is scheduled to open this fall, while Sherwin said the city is considering joining with Beverly Hills to advertise in the United Kingdom.

The bureau president spent part of last week in Sacramento with other tourism officials from Southern California, brainstorming ways to spend a record amount of state tourism money. In September 2006, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill that allocated $50 million to California’s tourism marketing budget for the 2007-08 fiscal year.

With the U.S. dollar continuing to weaken in the global market, Newport Beach is expecting a glut of tourists in the coming months — and the Irvine Co. and the Conference and Visitors Bureau are stepping up their efforts to accommodate foreigners.

Nina Robinson, the vice president of marketing and communications for the Irvine Co., said Fashion Island already offered store directories in Spanish and Japanese and planned to add one in Chinese. In December, Fashion Island Marketing Director Laura Davis said, the company also hired a new tourism manager who is fluent in Japanese.

Of course, Sherwin noted, sometimes the region just sold itself.

“The message we want to get out there is that Newport Beach is an upscale Southern California lifestyle destination,” he said. “What do you expect to see when you come to Southern California? You expect to experience great weather, see beautiful people, shop in gorgeous locales.

“That’s kind of what Newport Beach is all about. We kind of embody so many of the stereotypes of what people expect in the Southern California experience.”

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at [email protected].