Tourism Builds Community
Back to Top of ListHow DMOs Fuel Tourism
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Destinations International
A Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) is typically responsible for driving visitation into a destination and promoting visitor spend – both of which are tightly linked to a community’s long-term success. The activities, programs, and initiatives of a destination organization help create a place where residents and visitors want to visit, live, work, and invest, making the destination more attractive to workers, entrepreneurs, and investors.
Tax Revenues
A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) that typically contributes to the local economy is visitor spend. Visitor spending increases the effective tax base of a community, which allows local governments to provide a higher quality of services without increasing tax rates for its residents. Valued community assets, such as bike paths, hiking trails, or community gardens, are often partially funded by the visitor economy. For example, in 2024, each household in Huntington Beach would need to be taxed an additional $272 to replace the visitor-generated local taxes.
Economic Opportunity and Jobs
As a destination builds its own brand, local businesses can capitalize on new-found awareness and interest by developing their own unique products or services that align with the brand promise. This becomes a win-win situation for both visitors and residents - travelers are met with a more complete customer experience, while business owners invest profits back into the local economy and hire their own community members.
Three levels of impact include:
- Direct Impacts: Visitor spending creates direct economic value within a discrete group of sectors (such as recreation and transportation). This supports a relative proportion of spending, jobs, wages, and taxes within each sector.
- Indirect Impacts: Each directly affected sector also purchases goods and services as inputs (e.g. food wholesalers, utilities) into production. These impacts are called indirect impacts or supply-chain effects.
- Induced Impacts: Lastly, the induced impact is generated when employees whose wages are generated either directly or indirectly by visitor spending spend those wages in the local economy. This is called the induced impact or income effect.
The more successful a destination brand becomes, the more the community is able to invest back into itself, and so on.
Source: The Economic Impact of Tourism in Huntington Beach, California; Tourism Economics, 2024 Analysis
Huntington Beach Visitor Profile
Back to Top of ListIn 2024, 2.34 million visitors* came to Huntington Beach to experience Surf City USA®. This was an increase of 4.4% compared to 2023 visitation. Huntington Beach visitors traveled from major cities across the country, including Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Denver, and New York, among others.
DMOs work to attract every sort of visitor; the ideal visitors being those who stay overnight in the destination. To attract these high-value customers, VHB utilizes insight gained from highly targeted marketing campaigns, historical campaign performance, data mining technology, and various economic & consumer research.
As a result, VHB has identified five consumer profiles:
- HB Collection: HB Collection visitors are staying in Huntington Beach oceanfront luxury properties.
- Huntington Beach Lover: These visitors were spotted at one of Huntington Beach's beautiful beaches.
- Never Been to LA Before (LA Visitor): These visitors were visiting the LA area for the first time, and they hit all the most touristy spots.
- Hidden Gem Cultural Traveler: Travelers who are looking for unique, off-the-beaten-path things to do, places to stay, etc.
- Select Service: Visitors who typically stay in budget-friendly accommodations.
