Anaheim City Council members will require the city’s controversial tourism bureau to show how many conventions they’ve booked and track where they spend public tourism dollars following a scathing state audit and city commissioned corruption probe report.
Last year, state auditors found Visit Anaheim was improperly subcontracting with the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce – who then improperly spent tourism dollars to lobby elected officials and to support its preferred candidates through a political action committee for years.
Auditors concluded Visit Anaheim improperly spent those public dollars because city officials failed to oversee the tourism bureau’s expenditures.
Now under recommendations from those same auditors, Anaheim’s elected officials are revamping their agreement with Visit Anaheim – rolling out new oversight measures.
On Tuesday, City Councilwoman Natalie Rubalcava publicly stated that it is time to hold the tourism bureau accountable and ensure they’re doing their job.
“Your feet need to be held to the fire. You make a lot of money for what you do,” Rubalcava said at last night’s city council meeting.
“We really need to be booking enough conventions or youth sports events so that we’re really helping everybody, and not just the hotels that are in and around the convention center.”
City council members voted unanimously on a one-year contract with Visit Anaheim to market the Disneyland resort and book conventions.
As part of the new contract, the tourism bureau will have to report on new key performance indicators like hotel occupancy rates and convention center bookings so city officials can gauge how effectively Visit Anaheim is spending tourism tax dollars.
[Read: Anaheim on Track to Require Tourism Bureau Show Convention, Hotel Bookings]
Visit Anaheim’s money comes from the Anaheim Tourism Improvement District, which is funded by an additional 2% tax on hotel rooms. The tourism bureau gets 75% of that money and is supposed to secure bookings at the city-owned convention center and boost hotel stays through advertising.
The other 25% is placed in a separate fund allocated for transportation needs in the resort area.