HUNTINGTON BEACH : Rebuilding City Starts Tourism Push

With major developments well under way to reinvigorate downtown during the next decade, a Visitors & Convention Bureau has been established to help drum up tourist interest.

The bureau, which has been operating since last month in a downtown office, was formally launched Monday as the City Council approved a $150,000 grant to cover its first-year costs.

Although the bureau is being entirely funded by the city with a portion of hotel bed-tax revenues, it is not a branch of city government but will operate as an independent entity under contract with the city.

City officials and business leaders a year ago began discussing the formation of the Visitors & Convention Bureau, largely to promote developments under way in the Main Street-municipal pier area, the hub of the city’s redevelopment project, said developer Stephen Bone, president of the bureau’s 11-member board of directors.

The hotels, restaurants, shopping areas, beaches and wildlife refuge along the city’s 8 1/2-mile coastline will remain the chief focus of the campaign, said Diane Baker, recently hired as the bureau’s executive director. “But we also have to look at all the different components of Huntington Beach . . . and that we’re so centrally located” near other major Southern California attractions, she said. In particular, the bureau aims to increase tourism during the winter months, when attendance at the beaches drops off, she said.

Since no statistics have ever been gathered as to how many visitors the city attracts each year or how much money they spend, the bureau has not set any specific goals for increasing tourism, Baker said. The only gauge the city has to estimate tourism is revenue from its 10% hotel-motel bed tax, which totaled $750,000 during the 1988-89 fiscal year, according to William Reed, the city’s public information officer. The current city budget estimates bed-tax revenues at $900,000, Reed said.

Convention trade, Baker added, figures to increase considerably with the opening of several new facilities, such as a 500-seat banquet hall included in the 44-acre, $350-million Waterfront complex scheduled to open in July. The Waterfront project will also include four hotels to accommodate up to 1,500 guests.

The convention bureau’s initial advertising push is scheduled for May.