Reopening of Tourism Office to Be Considered : Oxnard: The proposed agency would be funded, in part, by $75,000 from the city. Officials say local hotel bed tax revenues have fallen 18% since the bureau closed in 1991.

More than two years after the city of Oxnard disbanded its tourism bureau for lack of money, the City Council today will consider spending $75,000 to reopen the bureau and raise the city’s bed tax.

Since the office closed in 1991, the city has seen hotel bed tax revenues slump by 18%, or $290,000--twice the drop incurred by the city of Ventura, which retained its visitors’ bureau. Losses from related revenue sources such as sales tax from tourist purchases make the decline even more painful, Oxnard officials said.

The proposed new agency, to be called the Greater Oxnard and Harbors Tourism Bureau, would be funded by $75,000 from the city, $75,000 from hotels and other tourist-dependent businesses, and an estimated $148,000 in revenue generated from a proposed increase in the city’s bed tax from 9% to 10%.

If the city’s revenues from the hotel bed tax increases more than $148,000, the tourism bureau would split the additional revenues with the city in a form of profit sharing, said Steve Kinney, Oxnard’s economic development director.

Kinney blamed the decline in tourist dollars in part on the city’s lack of visibility in recent years.

“With Oxnard invisible on the screen from a marketing point of view, we have had a cumulative negative effect from the loss of the visitors’ bureau,” Kinney said.

Ever since the city ended its $398,000 annual subsidy for the former Oxnard Convention and Visitors Bureau, tourist services have been handled on a part-time basis by publicists for the city’s downtown area.

But Ruth Bernstein, who supervises the promotional office in Oxnard’s Heritage Square, said her two-person office cannot solicit tours and conventions for the city or even respond to all the phone inquiries from the public.

“We don’t have an 800 number,” Bernstein said. “When I get messages from all over the country asking me to call back, I wonder whether I really want to spend the money to call them back.”

Michael Koutnik, who is chairman of the tourism development committee of the Oxnard Chamber of Commerce, said the promotional efforts of area hotels has not been enough to promote Oxnard as a tourist destination.

“We have taken ourselves out of the tourism industry as effectively as possible,” Koutnik said.

“This new bureau needs to look at the 8 million residents right next door in Los Angeles County, and to secondary markets such as the Bakersfield area,” he said. “Right now, there’s nobody standing up and talking about Oxnard. Even potential visitors from within Ventura County are being coaxed to go elsewhere.”

Oxnard’s previous tourism bureau tried to do too much with its limited resources, and the new bureau will be encouraged to concentrate its resources on the local markets, Kinney, the economic development director, said.

“Where we failed, though, was to not have some alternative solution in place, so it wouldn’t take three years to put something together,” Kinney said.

Koutnik and others close to the tourist industry say Oxnard has missed out on potential business by its absence at conventions for travel agents and in magazines marketed to corporate travel planners.

“Whether it’s the travel planner for a bus tour or a group like the American Medical Assn., we’ve crossed ourselves off the list,” Koutnik said.

While some Oxnard officials said Ventura has benefited from the absence of an Oxnard tourism bureau, the head of the Ventura Visitors and Convention Bureau, Russ Smith, sees it differently.

“While the old bureau was in operation, we always said we were (working) together in wanting to sell the Ventura-Oxnard area,” Smith said. “Once we get them up here, we’ll fight over which hotel they stay in.”

Hotel Bed Tax Revenues For Oxnard and Ventura, 1988-1993 Bed tax revenues in Oxnard have declined 18% since peaking at $11.6 million in 1989-’90, while Ventura’s hotel tax revenues have dropped just 9% since hitting a high of $2 million in 1990-’91. Oxnard officials hope that by funding a new tourism bureau, the city will stop further losses. Source: Oxnard Economic Development Dept.