Paso Robles joins county’s tourism marketing district
Visit San Luis Obispo County CEO Stacie Jacob and senior director Chuck Davison, at lecturn, present their request for Paso Robles to join the county’s tourism marketing district. Photo by Heather Young
County’s transient occupancy tax could increase to 13 percent
The Paso Robles City Council voted 5-0 this week to authorize the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors to establish a countywide tourism marketing district that includes lodging properties in the city. If established, the district would impose a one percent tax on all short-term lodging, bringing the total transient occupancy tax to 13 percent. The SLO County Tourism Marketing District will be managed, if approved by the SLO County Board of Supervisors, by Visit SLO County, a nonprofit that promotes the county through advertising, marketing, public relations and group sales.
“The assessment is an additional one-percent tax on lodging,” Visit SLO County Senior Director Chuck Davison said. “This is not coming out of the city’s tax coffers. This is business owners of properties who have stood up and said we are not competing with the bookend counties on either side.”
In order to establish the district, Visit SLO County is asking each city in the county to consent to being including in the district and to collect/administer the one-percent assessment. Then it will be taken to the county board of supervisors to take action to form the district. Once that has happened, the county’s hoteliers will vote. Each hotelier’s vote will be weighted based on the total taxable rents of the lodging properties. Fifty percent plus one vote of the weighted votes are required to form the district.
The tax could bring in $2.8 million that would used to get people to stay in the county longer.
“What we’ve missed is the countywide identity,” Visit SLO County CEO Stacie Jacob said. “We believe we can do a better job connecting all the [opportunities] in the county.”
Jacob said that both Santa Barbara and Monterey counties have larger marketing budgets that Visit SLO County wants to change so SLO County can be more competitive with neighboring counties and other wine countries. The board of directors for the district would be made up of 15 people, all from the lodging industry.
“The goal here is to get the best person to represent [the lodging community],” Davison said.
The term for the district, to begin with, would be for five years and then re-evaluated again. At that time, Jacob said, they’ll ask for a 10-year term. Davison said there are two goals of the five-year plan, the first is to increase demand and the second is to increase awareness. In order to do that, the biggest change in the budget will be to increase the advertising budget from $26,500 annually to $1 million.
“The goal here is to already leverage the things we have in place … and converting those into overnight stays,” Jacob said. “We know we have a great deal of fans that want to keep coming back to the area … how do we encourage them instead of a three-night to stay for a five-night stay?”
Paso Robles resident Kathy Barnett questioned the district, wanting to know how much marketing is enough. She also said she’d like to see businesses assessed one percent and that money put into a fund for attracting jobs.
“My biggest concern was what the local hoteliers thought of this since they’d be impacted the most,” Mayor Duane Picanco said. “I don’t think it should be our place to deny it, so I think we should support it.”
