San Luis Obispo Business
August, 1999

City Continues Strong Tourism Support

The San Luis Obispo City Council has voted to renew the Chamber's contract with the City for tourism promotion and visitor services showing their support for both the Chamber's work and belief in the value in tourism promotion.

The Chamber's promotion and visitor services contracts are part of a comprehensive program which includes two other contracted agencies, the SLO County Visitors & Conference Bureau (VCB) and Barnett Cox & Associates (BC&A), the City's advertising agency.

The 1999-2001 budget for advertising and tourism promotion paid to the three agencies, will total $657,005. This amount reflects an increase of approximately 3% over the amount allotted for tourism promotion in the last two-year budget cycle.

The three entities work together to promote San Luis Obispo as an overnight tourist destination with the goal being to increase the amount of sales tax and Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) generated by hotel stays. The City of San Luis Obispo currently collects TOT at a rate of 10 percent from all hotels, motels and inns within the city limits. Latest figures indicate that from July ‘98 through April ‘99, $2.7-million dollars in TOT has been collected, an increase of roughly $300,000 over the same period in ‘97/98. A percentage of that sum goes toward funding the entire promotional, advertising and grants-in-aid budget. The City's promotional program is overseen by the Promotional Coordinating Committee (PCC), a group of seven residents appointed by the City Council.

"The Mission of the PCC is two-fold," explained committee chairperson Sandy Baer. "We're charged by the City Council to allocate funds to promote the City as a tourist destination, particularly during the off-season. Additionally, our mission is to improve the quality of life in San Luis Obispo via cultural and recreational activities that attract tourists to our town."

During the 1999/01 fiscal year, the Chamber will continue to provide two services—a full-service Visitors Center and promotional services. The Visitors Center responds to visitor inquiries, dispenses information about San Luis Obispo, handles telephone calls from the public, and fulfills responses to requests for visitor information generated through the City's advertising contract. Promotional services by the Chamber include working to obtain free coverage of San Luis Obispo in newspapers, magazines, radio, television and books through press releases, pitch letters and personal contacts with travel writers and editors throughout the country.

The VCB will continue to market the entire central coast as a tourist destination and will do so through a variety of activities including advertising and promotion, participation in travel trade shows, brochure development and distribution, publicity, market research, group business and film production attraction.

BC&A will work to foster overnight and extended stays to San Luis Obispo through a combination of paid advertising and special promotional programs with area attractions.

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