San Diego tourism marketing district

from today's San Diego Business Journal -

Tourism Marketing District to Allow Hotels to Increase Promotional Funds
Convention & Visitors Chief Ready to Ramp Up Marketing Efforts in U.S., Overseas
By CONNIE LEWIS

"With the passage of a proposed tourism marketing district that gives local hotels the ability to assess themselves to raise destination marketing funds rather than relying on annual supplements from cash strapped City Hall, the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau is preparing to do more with more, instead of more with less as it has for the past few years." ...

"The total dollar amount for the revised marketing budget has yet to be set. However, Peckinpaugh anticipates that it will be significantly higher than the $3.2 million budgeted for the fiscal year which began in July. The media buy portion of that sum currently stands at $2.6 million.

In 2003 when ConVis had reached a funding apex, it had a total operating budget of $16.2 million, of which $13.9 million came from City Hall via a 10.5 Transient Occupancy Tax, or hotel room tax. The remainder came from private sources, primarily membership dues. At that time, the bureau’s marketing budget was about $6 million. “That’s a benchmark” for augmenting the spending, Peckinpaugh said.

Target Cities

As in the past, the national advertising would target the cities of Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Sacramento, San Francisco, Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz., which are the county’s biggest suppliers of leisure tourists.

Between fiscal 2004 and 2006, the bureau lost 37 percent of its funding, or $5.1 million, and reduced its staff from 102 to the current total of 65 people. Part of the reason for the staff reduction was that ConVis lost one of its main jobs, marketing space at the 2.6-million-square-foot San Diego Convention Center, however in addition to the task of luring leisure tourists, it still markets space for in-hotel meetings and events.

While City Hall has slashed budgets for services and agencies in order to deal with an under-funded municipal pension system, the bureau’s supplement was left intact in fiscal 2007 and remained flat in fiscal 2008 at $8.8 million.

Its total operational budget of $14.6 million is made up from private sources, primarily dues." ....

for the complete story see:
http://sdbj.com/enews_article.asp?aID=489719202.9391591.1563
614.6367885.3568276.195&aID2=120269&lid=30&sid=&cID=Z