The Beverly Hills City Council reviewed a series of expenditures for the city’s tourism and marketing efforts in the next fiscal year at its May 13 Special Study Session. The responsibility for promoting the city’s commercial assets falls largely to the triad of the Rodeo Drive Committee, the Conference and Visitors Bureau (CVB) and the Chamber of Commerce. The Council readily signaled approval for funding the entities in the hopes of encouraging a robust recovery of the city’s tourism and business sectors. In a later Special Meeting on May 13, the Council approved the funds for the Chamber of Commerce; the Council will vote to approve the other items in June.
At the lowest point of the pandemic, the city’s stock of luxury hotels faced an unprecedented crisis of vacancy. The consequences of the empty rooms rippled out to the city’s coffers, which draw large sums of money from the additional levy paid by hotels for hotel guests (the Transient Occupancy Tax, or TOT). With COVID-19 transmission rates plummeting, vaccination rates rising, and restrictions lifting, the city’s Finance Department projects around $35 million in TOT revenue next year–up considerably from the less than $15 million netted last year, but still significantly down from 2019’s haul of $50 million. From this, the city is allocating about $5 million for its tourism and marketing budget (an amount that also pays off the roughly $750,000 deficit incurred last year).
