Newport Beach : City May Add 1% Hotel Charge for Promotion
The struggling Newport Beach Visitors and Convention Bureau won a small victory Monday night as the City Council voted to consider a 1% surcharge on hotel bills to pay for an advertising campaign.
The $400,000 that the council expects to raise through a surcharge on the existing 8% bed tax would be used by the bureau to market Newport Beach.
The council already had given preliminary approval to a 1% hike, but as a bed tax and not as a surcharge. A tax would be put into the general fund and then disbursed to the bureau. The surcharge would go into a separate fund and then be sent to the bureau.
“It’s a lot cleaner and more direct,” said Councilman John C. Cox Jr., who proposed the surcharge. Also, he said, a surcharge would be “easier to retract if it doesn’t work.”
The city attorney’s office will prepare a draft of the proposed ordinance for the council.
Chip Stuckmeyer, director of sales at the Marriott Hotel in Newport Beach and president of the bureau, said the money is sorely needed for advertising. Hotel occupancy rates in the city have fallen from a high of about 80% to between 60% and 70% in recent years, Stuckmeyer said.
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