Over the course of the last few weeks, the impact of COVID-19 on the tourism industry has been substantial. The repercussions have led to challenging decisions and temporary closures to some of our great establishments. We extend our thoughts to those affected by this sudden and unexpected shift to our way of life.
While our primary concern is the health and safety of our community and visitors, SDTMD and San Diego’s tourism leaders are working with a sense of urgency to plan for and accelerate the industry’s recovery as immediately as possible when the time comes.
This situation is extremely difficult on our tourism industry and SDTMD will use every financial tool at its disposal to help our local tourism industry recover as quickly as possible when it is safe for people to start traveling and gathering again.
We will work together to emerge from this crisis and do our part to keep our employees and visitors safe and healthy in the meantime. To that end, we want to take this opportunity to provide you with useful industry resources and an update on the actions SDTMD is currently taking.
STEWARDSHIP OF SDTMD DOLLARS
We continue to maintain regular communication with all of our key stakeholders and SDTMD-funded partners including the San Diego Tourism Authority, the primary recipient of our funding. Our shared goal is to ensure that TMD dollars are deployed at a time that will produce the greatest opportunity for restoring room night revenue at our hotels, which is critical for helping generate the third largest source of tax collections for the City of San Diego, TOT. At this time, the SDTA and other funded contractors are time shifting their promotional efforts to help in the recovery phase of this crisis. Learn more here.
FY 2021 PLANNING
SDTMD held a special board meeting on Friday, March 20 to revise our budget forecast for FY20 as well as the budget and funding allocations for FY21. Given some events are either no longer occurring or are being shifted to later in the year, the board opted to withhold event funding and reconsider funding requests in due course. At this time, the board is preserving the large majority of SDTA funding so that the destination marketing organization remains in a strong position to invest in targeted and impactful marketing campaigns when the timing is appropriate.
VISIT CALIFORNIA TOOLKIT
Visit California has compiled a helpful toolkit for industry partners and is regularly monitoring and revising projections for inbound visitation and spending as more data becomes available.
WHERE YOU CAN FIND CAN HELP
Funds like the San Diego Foundation’s San Diego COVID-19 Response Fund have been set up to help those in need in our community and information on the City of San Diego’s business relief and support can be found here.
Thank you for your part in ensuring the continued health and safety of our tourism community at this time. Together, we will get through this.
