County to fund Visit Tucson with $3.4 million

The money is for a “comprehensive destination services contract,” which tasks Visit Tucson with attracting leisure travelers, meetings, sports activities, film companies and visitors from Mexico, said County Manager Chuck Huckelberry.

The funding is based on projected bed tax revenues, which last year ended up putting $3.1 million in the tourism promotion entity’s coffers.

The hospitality industry, which was hard hit during the recession, is expecting an uptick here next year, Huckelberry said.

“We’re optimistic … we’re hearing good things,” he said. “It does seem like tourism is picking up in Tucson and Southern Arizona.”

Hoteliers are expecting more conferences during peak season, January through April 2015, said Brent DeRaad, president of Visit Tucson.

“A lot of the impact we’re bringing in are sales taxes as well,” he said. “That revenue goes back into the county, city and other municipalities.”

The county funding, approved Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors, makes up about 44 percent of Visit Tucson’s $7 million budget.

Visit Tucson also receives $2.9 million from the city of Tucson, plus money from the town of Oro Valley, the Pasqua Yaqui Nation, the Tohono O’odham Nation and private sources, DeRaad said.

The county funds come from bed taxes from resorts, motels, hotels and other lodgings in unincorporated Pima County. Visitors there pay a 6 percent bed tax. Half of that — 3 percent — goes to Visit Tucson, while 2 percent goes to Kino Sports Park and the remainder to economic development in general.

Visit Tucson’s efforts brought in $200 million in direct impact last year, DeRaad said, or about $30 for every dollar spent.

The county has long supported the agency, which had been known as the Metropolitan Tucson Convention and Visitors Bureau, but it hit a bump when a 2010 performance audit criticized the bureau for not being accountable to government funders, leading to a confrontation by the board over continued funding.

Its solution was to rebrand itself as Visit Tucson.

“Visit Tucson is doing a good job of transitioning themselves from the MTCVB to Visit Tucson,” Huckelberry said. “They’re changing what promotes the Tucson region from a development perspective.”

Many jobs here are in the service industry, such as hotels and restaurants. Though relatively low-wage, they’re good starting places for students and for people who can then move up the employment ladder into higher-paying fields, Huckelberry said.

The county’s next economic-development plan, which should be ready in about a month, will include a regional visitor center downtown. That would incorporate the Western National Parks Association, which represents 67 national parks in 12 states and hosts a variety of cultural events. It’s currently located in Oro Valley.

The county would seek to locate it next to the Santa Cruz River near the new streetcar so people could take the streetcar to visit, for example, the Arizona State Museum on the University of Arizona campus.

“This is the biggest industry in our region and this is an opportunity to enhance that industry and create more economic development,” WNPA executive director Jim Cook said of the visitor center.

The plan, which would need to be approved by voters, also would seek to expand the hangar capacity at the Pima Air & Space Museum, which is ranked No. 2 in display area in the country, to make it No. 1.

And it would refresh and expand the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum to make it a place people would go to for two days rather than just one.