Bob Hope’s signature song was Thanks for the Memory, but he may soon fade from the airport named after him.
The panel which runs Bob Hope airport just outside Los Angeles is considering renaming it Hollywood Burbank to establish a clearer geographic identity and boost traffic.
It awarded a $50,000 contract last week to a branding consultant to help escape the shadow of LAX, 27 miles south.
One option under consideration is to keep the late comedian’s name as a legal moniker but stop using it in marketing strategies, executive director Dan Feger told the Los Angeles Times. “We think that a clear geographic identity and creative marketing tools will help us broaden our passenger base.”
Built in 1930, it was named Hollywood-Burbank airport in 1967, renamed Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena airport in 1978 and then Bob Hope airport in 2003, the year he died in nearby Toluca Lake.
Flight passenger numbers are rising across the US and booming at LAX, but were flat at Bob Hope in the first 10 months of this year and declined 3.7% in the 2013-14 fiscal year.
Some people thought it was in Palm Springs, the Mojave desert town where the entertainer had an estate and which hosts a golf tournament named after him, according to Denis Carvill, the airport’s director of contractors and properties.
John Wayne airport in Orange County has reported similar problems.
In contrast to the sprawling LAX, Bob Hope airport is small, intimate and popular with many of those who use it.
Born Leslie Townes Hope in London in 1903, the entertainer moved to the US, changed his first name to Bob and became a vaudeville and Hollywood star in a career spanning 60 years.
In 1997 Congress named him an honourary armed forces veteran – the only person to receive that distinction – for his front-line visit to troops during conflicts in the second world war, Korea and Vietnam. He won five special Oscars for his contribution to the film industry.
• This article was amended on 30 December 2014. An earlier version said Bob Hope had been born Lester Hope. That has been corrected to Leslie Townes Hope.
