Executives to Revive Bureau for Tourism : Oxnard: Agency, which fell victim to budget cuts three years ago, starts its comeback this week with $75,000 in city seed money.

Hoping to pull Oxnard’s tourism industry out of a nose-dive, business leaders are preparing to resurrect the city’s visitors bureau which fell victim to budget cuts three years ago.

The Greater Oxnard and Harbors Tourism Bureau will start its comeback in earnest this week when the city pours $75,000 in seed money into the effort.

The bureau’s board members currently are fashioning an advertising campaign and searching for an executive director to head the agency which hopes to lure tourists to Oxnard with the promise of unspoiled beaches and uncrowded harbors.

Within two weeks, the bureau is expected to be doing business at the historic Heritage Square office complex in downtown Oxnard.

“Oxnard is a wonderful but well-kept secret,” said Michael Koutnik, president of the tourism bureau and a longtime Oxnard businessman. “If I have one mandate, it is that we are now going to share our secret with the rest of the world.”

At the root of the new campaign is a proposal to boost the city’s bed tax to help pay for the effort to lure tourists and their pocketbooks.

The proposed increase--from 9% to 10%--is expected to generate hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in new revenue for the city. Hotel operators say they are willing to support the increased bed tax in return for a renewed commitment to promote Oxnard as a vacation destination.

Council members are scheduled to consider the matter Tuesday.

“It’s really something that we all feel has been overdue,” said Renee Spingola, sales director for the Financial Plaza Hilton. “When you say Oxnard, people really don’t know where it is.”

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Bob Burk, marketing director for the Radisson Suite Hotel, said the 1% increase will raise Oxnard’s bed tax to the same level as that charged by hotels in Ventura and Santa Barbara.

“We don’t feel we are going to be at a disadvantage,” Burk said. “And we feel this is going to create additional dollars that are going to be put into the promotion of the area.”

Since Oxnard’s old tourism bureau folded in 1991, the city has seen hotel bed tax revenue slump nearly $300,000, twice the drop experienced by neighboring Ventura which has maintained its visitors bureau.

Oxnard also has lost sales tax revenue as fewer tourists have come to town to spend money, officials said.

The tourism trade has been choked, in part, by recession and gloomy weather in recent years. But business leaders and city officials say that the absence of a tourism bureau has only served to exacerbate that slump.

“We’ve been three years without a bureau which has the effect of being invisible in the tourism world,” said Steve Kinney, the city’s economic development director. “This is an effort to bend that trend line upward again and start to recapture some of the losses over the past few years.”

Toward that end, the City Council last month agreed to spend $211,000, including the $75,000 in seed money, to fund the first five months of the new tourism bureau.

As part of the agreement, the visitors bureau must come up with an additional $37,500 in start-up funds from private sources.

According to the bureau’s five-year spending plan, the council will be asked to spend about $1.6 million in support of the tourism campaign over the next five years.

But by fiscal year 1996-97, when the council will be asked to spend $373,000 toward that effort, the city expects to receive $420,000 in return from the increased bed tax and other tourism-related sources.

“City government just doesn’t have a lot of discretionary money to fund new projects, so the bureau needs to be self-supporting,” said Liz Stuart, director of sales for the Mandalay Beach Resort. “I think once people are aware of what we have, they will come to visit.”

Koutnik said the bureau hopes to immediately tap into the 8 million potential tourists in Southern California. And he said he expects the tourism bureau to produce results by this summer.

“If, in fact, the ship is or has been stalled in the water or drifting backwards, it will take us awhile to get the momentum up,” he said. “But if the weather cooperates, I think we’re going to have some dramatic increases.”

Added Burk from Radisson Suite: “Our story is good. The place we are talking about, what we are trying to sell, is good. I think the overall effort is going to be terrific.”