Inflated Records Probed at Long Beach Visitors Bureau

At least two former employees of the city-funded Long Beach Area Convention and Visitors Bureau have told internal auditors that hotel booking records were falsified to make the agency’s annual performance look better, The Times has learned.

A convention bureau board member also has confirmed that the accusations are part of a performance audit of bureau personnel, including the chief executive officer and a vice president of sales.

The audit by Scott Bryant & Associates, a Virginia-based consulting firm, is the latest development in a widening inquiry into how the tourism-related organization added at least 47,000 questionable bookings, which allowed it to reach its sales goal for fiscal year 1999. At least $20,000 in bonuses was paid to the staff on the basis of the inaccurate numbers.

Sharon Thomsen, a former sales staff member who left the bureau in April, said she was directed by Tom Dorsett, the vice president of sales, to inflate the number of room bookings because the agency was falling short of its performance goal for 1999.

Thomsen, of Long Beach, said she eventually confronted the bureau president, Linda Howell-DiMario, about the propriety of the alterations, but was rebuffed in her effort to stop the changes. She quoted Howell-DiMario as supporting Dorsett’s orders.

In addition, Shanna Fuller of Long Beach, a former national sales manager, said she saw questionable entries in the office computer system, including many bookings for sports events that were unsupported by sales records. Those entries, she said, were made under Dorsett’s name.

Thomsen and Fuller, who left the agency in July, said they conveyed their concerns during interviews for the audit. The board member, who requested anonymity, said he and his colleagues also discussed the accusations with the auditor.

Howell-DiMario denied the charges, saying “the notion of deliberate falsification is not in evidence.” She said a news conference about the phantom bookings is scheduled for today and declined to discuss the matter further.

Dorsett could not be reached for comment. Neither could officials of the Bryant firm, hired by the convention and visitors bureau to conduct the audit.

The Long Beach Area Convention and Visitors Bureau--one of the city’s main promotional arms--has a sales force that arranges banquet facilities and hotels for groups and businesses interested in holding major events in town. The agency, which also gathers statistics related to tourism in the area, receives at least $3.5 million a year in municipal funds.

For fiscal year 1999, the bureau had a sales goal of 372,000 hotel room-nights. Figures show that it exceeded that amount by 7,766. As a result of the statistics, about $20,000 in bonuses was paid to the sales force, excluding any received by Howell-DiMario and other executives.

Reviews over the last several months, including one by the accounting firm of Ernst & Young, show that at least 47,000 bookings were included erroneously in the total. Those reviews did not try to determine how or why the statistics had been inflated.

Long Beach City Auditor Gary Burroughs said the personnel audit is an attempt to find out what happened, who is at fault and what can be done at the convention bureau to prevent the situation from recurring.

“I clearly know that errors were made,” Burroughs said. “I don’t really know what the intent was or what people’s motives were. But I don’t get a sense that it was done for money.”

The board member said the booking numbers appeared to have been inflated several times in late 1999, including an eleventh-hour attempt to increase the figures the day before they were supposed to be announced at a convention bureau board meeting in October 1999.

Earlier reviews, such as the Ernst & Young report released last month, show that sales figures were bumped up using hotel rooms booked for sporting events held in the city. The agency keeps track of bookings from sports events, but should take credit for them only if the sales staff does substantial work on the event.

Reviewers discovered that the bookings in question were credited to a variety of bureau sales people, even though they never worked on the events.

While the inquiries found about 38,000 properly claimed sports bookings, they also uncovered 47,000 that either could not be explained or lacked the appropriate sales records to justify the agency’s getting credit for them.

The Ernst & Young report, as well as an inquiry by the city auditor, revealed a variety of management problems at the convention bureau, including a lack of internal financial controls.

So far, the personnel audit has been conducted in secret, with access to the full report restricted to a handful of people, including members of the convention bureau’s executive board.

Although the final report is finished, Long Beach City Manager Henry Taboada said he has told the convention bureau’s board of directors that its members will not get a copy of the complete audit, at least not yet. However, a 2 1/2-page summary of the conclusions has been provided to the board.

In the summary, Chris Pook, the bureau’s chairman, wrote that the recommendations are designed to put the bureau “on the path of regaining the trust and confidence of the public.”

The audit recommends that Howell-DiMario and Dorsett repay unearned bonuses they received in fiscal 1998-99 and in 1999-2000. Salespeople, however, would be allowed to keep their bonuses.