Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS : CITIES : Buena Park Moves to Attract More Tourists
Seeking a bigger slice of the tourist trade, Buena Park officials have voted to close the city’s Visitor and Convention Bureau and seek an outside marketing firm or a new city-run department to bring conventions to town.
As the city celebrates its 100th birthday this year, officials are looking to the day when full-service, first-class hotels will readily move to their city.
“Too many of our people come here for the day and leave, and what we need to do is fix up the town so that they’ll want to stay,” said Louis Rosen, former president of the Buena Park Visitor and Convention Bureau, an 85-member agency that was summarily disbanded.
For all the new interest in tourism, bureau members were angry with the City Council’s decision to disband their organization. Some said they had no voice in the decision and that city officials had never really supported their efforts.
City officials countered that the bureau had not adequately accounted for the $202,000 they gave it last year.
In any event, tourist industry officials said the council’s action did not bode well for the city’s future effort to attract the tourist trade.
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