Buena Park’s destination marketing agency and representatives of its 21 hotels and motels are working with city officials to form a hospitality improvement district as a source of dedicated funding for promotional efforts with a preliminary annual budget of close to $1 million.
Visit Buena Park is a city agency and currently gets about $360,000 a year from Buena Park’s budget.
Visit Buena Park Director Sara Copping said plans for the district could go to the city council next month.
The city council has been involved “every step of the way” in a discussion process that has taken about a year, she said.
Details remain to be worked out, but a deal could come as early as the end of the year, and a self-assessment on hotels and motels of about 2% of room rates would begin to be collected within a few months.
There are already seven “improvement districts” in various OC cities. The private, nonprofit organizations are commonly operated by local destination marketing organizations. Most are based on a 1994 state law and funded by self-assessments that raise funds apart from municipal money.
“They’re assessing themselves to promote the destination,” said Gina Trechter, a project manager for Sacramento-based Civitas Advisors Inc., which works with groups to create the districts and whose president, John Lambeth, helped write the 1994 law.
Improvement districts provide funding for the work of tourism promoters destination marketing groups, such as Visit Anaheim or Destination Irvine.
They can also complement global efforts by groups such as the Irvine-based Orange County Visitors Association.
Buena Park has 21 hotels with 2,359 rooms—an average of 112 rooms per property. The lineup ranges from the 320-room Knott’s Berry Farm Hotel—the city’s largest—to the 20-room Covered Wagon Motel.
Funds raised by the new improvement district would have to go “specifically to generating revenue from overnight stays,” Copping said.
Such efforts can lend a significant hand to independent hotels and motels that don’t have a sales staff or marketing and logistical support that comes from affiliation with a national brand.
That’s the case with Buena Park Hotel and Suites, which dropped its affiliation with Best Western when it was sold in July 2013 for nearly $10 million to Industry, Calif.-based Pei Yi LLC.
General Manager Kirt Christensen said he’s had to rely on online travel sites and some social media to book the property’s 163 rooms and suites amid an ongoing renovation of the property, where rates range from $69 to $209 depending on the type of room and time of year.
The district is “a great opportunity for the city … We have to establish our own identity in Orange County,” he said.
It’s a chore that should be familiar in Buena Park, where Knott’s Berry Farm draws an estimated 3.6 million visitors a year but still operates in the shadow of the Disneyland Resort, which attracts about 25 million to neighboring Anaheim, according to the Burbank-based Themed Entertainment Association.
“Buena Park is an ancillary market to Anaheim” for tourists coming to Disneyland and local beaches, Christensen said. “But … any hotel in Buena Park is 10 minutes from the door of Disneyland, and you can stay for a fraction of the price.”
Visitors will have more options soon, with four new hotels—including three Hilton brands and the boutique Hotel Stanford—expected to add nearly 600 rooms to the city by 2017, according to Ruben Lopez, Buena Park’s director of economic development.
‘Increasingly Common’
California has 94 tourism-focused improvement districts, Civitas said, with seven in OC (see sidebar, this page).
“They’re increasingly common,” Copping said.
She said more hotel rooms and tourism marketing “increases retail and restaurant sales tax money.”
Efforts aim at Christensen’s goal of developing a distinct Buena Park image while connecting the city to the wider work of building up Orange County as an international destination.
“If you want to build brand awareness of the community … you need to tell your story,” said Gary Sherwin, chief executive of Newport Beach & Co., the nonprofit which runs the hotel improvement district there.
“Buena Park is becoming more competitive in the global market,” said Ed Fuller, president of the Orange County Visitors Association in Irvine. “They’re significantly involved in the Chinese market, and [a district] will help them [attract travelers from other areas].”
Fuller said Copping and Visit Buena Park have “been doing a great job with a limited budget,” but that an improvement district is needed “to truly become a player in the market.”
