San Diego Offers Incentives for Local Firms That Agree to Be ‘Super Hosts’
Local companies are being asked for written promises that they will not gouge visitors during Super Bowl week here next January. As a sweetener, they are being offered free marketing assistance.
The program, sponsored by the city’s Super Bowl Task Force and other business officials, grew out of a proposal--since dropped--for a city ordinance that would have made price-gouging during Super Bowl week illegal.
In April, the task force, a nonprofit corporation set up to promote the National Football League championship game to be held here Jan. 31, proposed the ordinance in an effort to block the kind of price-gouging that has taken place at some previous Super Bowls.
John Witt, San Diego’s city attorney, drafted an ordinance that was withdrawn after several hotel owners protested that it could be the “first step along the path to price controls,” Peg Nugent, the task force’s associate executive director, said Friday.
The Super Host Merchant Program now planned was modeled after one conducted in Tampa, Fla., host city for the 1984 Super Bowl. Nugent said the success of Tampa’s program was a big factor in that city being awarded the 1991 game. San Diego tourism officials, who say the 1988 game will pump $150 million into the local economy, say they want to ensure the Super Bowl returns to the city in the future.
Merchants who sign up as “super hosts” will agree to keep prices of products and services consistent with those that apply during non-Super Bowl weeks.
They will receive certificates for window display identifying them to visitors and the program will be widely advertised.
