Ventura to Develop Tourism Plan

Saying consultants’ studies have helped guide the city in everything from downtown redevelopment to libraries and cultural activities, the City Council voted 5 to 0 Monday night to look into spending up to $50,000 on a plan to beef up local tourism.

Mayor Jack Tingstrom and Councilman Gary Tuttle were absent.

“People ask, ‘Why don’t they just act? Why do they study everything?’ ” said Councilman Jim Friedman, explaining why he supports paying a consultant to do a tourism master plan. “But once you become a council member, you realize you can potentially make some big mistakes. And then you have the public clamoring, ‘How could you make this mistake?’ ”

He added that tourism is an important component of life in Ventura, and deserves close examination.

Debbie Solomon, Ventura’s public affairs coordinator, said many of the topics that would be examined by an outside consultant--such as analysis of visitor trends and hotel occupancy--are already dealt with in a piecemeal way by city employees.

However, no one is able to give a broad overview, she said.

She argued that a tourism master plan is especially important now, with the downtown parking garage to be completed in the spring, a new theater scheduled to open in June, and improvements such as the brick sidewalks and queen palms put in in recent years.

“We are somewhat coming off a time period of redevelopment,” Solomon said. “This is a good opportunity to look at where we are going for the next five years.”

Solomon said tourism in Ventura has exploded in recent years--with bed taxes--the most accurate measure of overnight visitors--increasing a total of 20% in 1995 and 1996.

But she said there are still big informational gaps.

“Who is our tourism market? We need to look at better measurements on that. The [Ventura Visitors’ and Convention] bureau is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars advertising,” she said. “We need to know where people are coming from.”

She said the city would also like to know where foreign visitors are coming from, and how many visitors take day trips to Ventura.

To calculate the number of daily visitors, the city currently uses state figures, which extrapolate the number of day visitors from the number of night visitors using the same formula--whether the city is Visalia or Ventura.

That number does not take into consideration Ventura’s proximity to Los Angeles, which increases its day visitors, Solomon pointed out.

According to a staff report, the purpose of a tourism master plan would be to provide a basis for strategic planning, prioritize projects, and provide private investment requirements for any public financial support.

Bill Clawson, executive director of the Ventura Visitors and Convention Bureau, supported the concept, but balked at the price. “I encourage the city staff to do everything they can to bring the cost down to significantly less than $50,000,” he said.

Now that the council has approved the idea, city staff will start looking for a consultant, and refine the list of issues to be examined.

The Visitors and Convention Bureau board of directors has requested that a plan be completed by April 30.