Anaheim’s new contract with Visit Anaheim mandates the tourism bureau explain in detail how it’s meeting benchmarks for attracting tourists and booking the convention center after a state audit said the city wasn’t keeping a close enough eye on the organization’s spending.
Visit Anaheim has existed for decades, but struck closer ties with the city in 2010 when it was contracted to handle the convention center’s booking and market the city, receiving funding from the then-created Anaheim Tourism Improvement District, which around 90 hotels pay into.
The reworked contract now asks that Visit Anaheim report annually to the city the number of room nights booked and hotel occupancy rates for hotels in the resort area and the number of booked conventions it helped secure. The marketing organization is earmarked three-quarters of the 2% assessment on nightly hotel rates guests pay for the improvement district, receiving tens of millions of dollars annually.
Councilmember Natalie Rubalcava told Visit Anaheim’s leaders, “You make a lot of money for what you do,” and she wants to make sure that the 90 hotels participating in the 2% assessment “are actually receiving heads in beds.”
Rubalcava said it appears bigger hotels have benefited more than the smaller ones from conventions. She asked that Visit Anaheim think outside the box to help address a recent slowdown in the hotel bookings, like maybe attracting youth sports events.
The new contract came about after a state audit released in early 2024 listed several actions the city should take to ensure better oversight of the assessment on night stays, which the state called public money. Before the audit, the city didn’t consider money paid into the Anaheim Tourism Improvement District via hotels to be public money.
“For me, this is about accountability and making sure that everybody is meeting the expectations that they need to be meeting,” said Councilmember Carlos Leon, “that we are spending the funds correctly.”
The council debated over the length of the contract and settled on a one-year term with a two-year automatic extension. The city can cancel the contract within 180 days.
Councilmembers agreed that they want Visit Anaheim to be successful and to get every dollar to attract and have tourists spending in the city.
Leon brought up how Visit Anaheim was before the council because a city-commissioned investigation found a misuse of money by Visit Anaheim. The audit was prompted by a local assemblymember requesting that the state office scrutinize what happened.
Since, Visit Anaheim brought in a new CEO. In April, it agreed to repay the city $3 million to settle issues surrounding questions of misused money.
Out of the state audit, the city also created a new advisory board to monitor the tens of millions of dollars spent by Visit Anaheim.
Moving forward, city officials, Visit Anaheim and hoteliers are in deep discussions over increases to the 2% Anaheim Tourism Improvement District assessment to fund affordable housing for resort workers.