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HB chamber seeks funds to launch tourism promotion
by Robb Fulcher
The Hermosa Beach Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau wants to launch a promotional blitz designed to draw as many as 2,700 additional visitors to the town each year. Officials estimate the visitors would spend $675,000 on lodging and $337,000 in the restaurants and shops.
In a departure from years past, chamber officials plan to ask for $85,000 in city funding to run the tourism program. That amounts to about 10 percent of the "bed tax" the city collects from its hotels, said Carla Merriman, the chamber’s executive director.
"We haven’t received any city funding in recent years," said Merriman, who plans to ask the council for the money at its regular meeting Tuesday, May 8.
The chamber is funded primarily by proceeds from its two yearly Fiesta Hermosa street fairs, which net a total of about $80,000. The council continues to consider scaling back or possibly banning one of the Fiestas, which is held over the three-day Labor Day weekend. (That matter is scheduled to come before the council May 22.)
Under the promotion plan, the chamber would take out advertising in publications such as Sunset magazine, Westways and the Los Angeles Times Sunday travel section, and send direct mail brochures to people listed in hotel databases or responding to the ads and other inquiries.
The campaign would also send press releases to "100 targeted regional and state newspapers and 75 key consumer and trade publications on a quarterly basis," and place rack cards in 470 hotels, car rental companies, restaurants and specialty shops from LAX to Long Beach and the Inland Empire.
The program would also include an expansion of the chamber’s website and inclusion in The Book, a glossy entertainment publication with a distribution of 400,000 in the South Bay.
"The chamber’s board decided a little over a year ago that this would be a benefit to our businesses," Merriman said.
"Hermosa Beach should be recognized as a California resort destination," Merriman and chamber vice chairman Conn Flatley wrote in a marketing proposal.
"We are best equipped to compete with the tourist who visits Southern California by car, and within a three-hour timetable. This includes both day tourists and weekenders, as well as business travelers," the officials wrote.
The Western Association of Chamber Executives found that about 80 percent of all California vacationers plan several three- or four-day getaways per year within four miles of their homes, the report stated.
The promotional campaign would target singles and couples for day trips, families with parents between 25 and 54 years old and a household income topping $45,000, and "business travelers who would rather stay four miles south of LAX than at the airport."
"A total of 406 rooms are available in Hermosa Beach, with double occupancy rates between $72 and $319," the report stated. A new hotel under construction on Pacific Coast Highway will add 72 more rooms, Merriman said.
Local hotels are not full up throughout the summer and would especially welcome visitors in the "shoulder seasons" of spring and fall, she said.
Many other cities give part of the hotel "bed tax" to the local chamber of commerce, according to the chamber report. Redondo Beach gives $240,000 or 1 percent of its bed tax, to the chamber; Santa Monica gives 6 percent or $986,000; Catalina gives 22 percent or $407,000; and Santa Barbara gives 11 percent or $970,000. ER