By Liam Dillon
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
San Diego’s hoteliers got what they wanted from the city on Tuesday. The City Council gave them more control over the Convention Center’s operations. The decision comes on the eve of the hoteliers’ vote on financing the center’s expansion through higher hotel-room taxes.
The hotel owners are trying to squeeze greater influence over the center in exchange for their support of the expansion. By controlling the center’s sales and marketing, they could direct more events to their own hotels and offer better deals to groups wanting to book the center.
They argue fattening their bottom lines also fattens the city’s tax revenues. Organized labor and Convention Center staff contend that giving hotels power over the center’s marketing could hurt existing operations and leave taxpayers liable if sales goals aren’t met.
I’ve covered the specifics of this issue in recent days so I’m instead going to focus on three takeaways from Tuesday’s events. We’ll call them the three R’s: Rush, Rhetoric and Results.
The Rush:
You wouldn’t think that a $3.1 million annual contract would create such a ruckus. But on Tuesday, the council chambers were packed.
Mayor Jerry Sanders stayed through the two-and-a-half hour meeting, as did his current and past chiefs of staff. Other high-level policy advisors buzzed in and out. Suit-wearing business leaders and hoteliers filled the front rows. Orange-shirted union members filled the back.
At stake was the Convention Center’s management. Right now, the Convention Center Corp., a public agency, handles the center’s sales and marketing. Hoteliers, Sanders and expansion boosters wanted to switch that control to the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau, or ConVis, a private organization. The proposed marketing contract is for $3.1 million a year.
Before Tuesday’s vote, and even after it, no one estimated the effect on the bottom lines of the hoteliers, the center and city taxpayers. The switch didn’t even appear on the council agenda until Friday. Few details about the plan’s impact surfaced in the meantime.
But the council went forward anyway, voting 7-1 to give the go-ahead for the switch.
And without details on the deal’s financial effects, all that’s clear is the hoteliers won and labor lost.
The council decision came a few hours after the Convention Center’s nonprofit board similarly approved the switch. Its Tuesday meeting was its second in two days. Another sign of the rush: Both of the board’s meetings happened by phone.
Last night, one of the board’s nine members, Mick Musella, submitted his resignation in a one-sentence fax without giving a reason. Musella is chairman of the ConVis board.
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Article copy from voiceofsandiego.org