Memo to Anaheim: Entertain This!; Jay’s Judgment: Ed Rocks

“Disney tax break up for renewal,” proclaimed the L.A. Times in its business section last week. “Disney works to stop gate tax,” announced the Register on its front page a day later. Here’s something that got lost in the run-up to a vote scheduled for this week by the Anaheim City Council: There is no “ticket tax” on the books, and any such tariff would be a direct hit on visitors—the folks who bring their families to town and leave their money. What actually exists in Anaheim is the threat of a tax on entertainment. It’s a possibility that the Disneyland Resort took off the table in 1996 via a 20-year agreement reached with the city—there is no law or ordinance involved—before construction started on its California Adventure park. There wasn’t a ticket tax back then—and there isn’t one now. Disney isn’t looking to avoid something that’s part of the price of admission for concerts at the Honda Center or movies or the Anaheim Ballet. The main proposal up for vote on July 7 would extend for 30 years the exemption on any entertainment tax that might be instituted, provided the company puts $1 billion into new developments. Here’s a suggestion for Anaheim pols: Approve the exemption and make every other entertainment business in the city a rider. You’re supposed to be leading lights of the city, not looming threats to the biggest slice of its economy … It’s not as though Anaheim doesn’t know its own strength. Consider Visit Anaheim, the new name of what used to be the Anaheim/Orange County Convention and Visitors Bureau—and aren’t you already wondering how that name survived so long into the Digital Age? Consider its logo, which borrows from Walt Disney Co.’s for the dot on the “i” in Anaheim … Credit Visit Anaheim CEO Jay Burress for a lot of the progress local destination marketing organizations have made in sorting themselves out and leveraging their respective strengths. Burress brought a pragmatic approach to the job two years ago, giving Visit Newport, Visit Huntington Beach, Visit Laguna Beach and others their due as stalwarts for their local constituencies. He also embraced the possibilities that the Orange County Visitors Association brings as an overarching advocate. Add it up, and there seems to be plenty of elbow room for Visit Anaheim to make Anaheim the focal point of its efforts … The Anaheim group and OCVA weren’t always a comfortable fit—Burress acknowledges that he found the relationship suffering from “misunderstandings.” That began to change when he met Ed Fuller, who had just taken charge of OCVA after a globe-trotting career with Marriott … Burress got an eye-opener on a sales trip to Asia with Fuller, who turned out to be a “rock star” of the hospitality trade over there, with his name on marquees, and GMs and whole staffs of 5-star hotels lining up to greet him … Burress also credits OCVA as a leader on the fertile field of tourism in the Gulf States of the Middle East. He reports that Anaheim is getting its share of attention from the Middle Eastern TV crews that also are hitting the beaches and other spots around OC to film segments for lifestyle and entertainment feature reports, as well as a 13-week series … It helps to have the Little Arabia district in Anaheim, especially Aleppo’s Kitchen on Brookhurst, which apparently has become a home away from home for at least one of the crews.