Huntington Beach touts growth, examines headwinds at tourism summit
The Visit California official visitor's guide for 2025 features actor John Stamos, a self-described 'California boy.'
Look closer, and locals will recognize the iconic Huntington Beach Pier in the background of the cover shot, which was taken at the Paséa Hotel and Spa.
Huntington Beach remains a big part of the state's tourism industry. Visit Huntington Beach hosted its biannual tourism summit on May 8 at another hotel across from the ocean, the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort and Spa.
'Huntington Beach does such a great job,' said Caroline Beteta, Visit California's president and chief executive. 'I can't emphasize enough how important it is for Huntington Beach to be fully funded, to take advantage of the platform that we present to the industry.'
Visit HB's president and chief executive, Kelly Miller, said his organization has taken advantage of a raise in the Tourism Bid Improvement District rate from 4 to 6%, which went into effect last July. That means that Visit HB gets a 6% cut from local hotels to fund its efforts in marketing Surf City.
'They send the money in, the city collects it and it comes to us,' Miller said. 'There are no local tax dollars that residents pay to fund tourism visitor marketing in Huntington Beach.'
The words 'cautiously optimistic' could describe the prospects for Huntington Beach and the state as a whole for 2025, though 'headwinds' was another word often used at the tourism summit. International tourism is expected to suffer with the strength of the U.S. dollar, as well as tariff policies instituted by President Trump.
According to a Tourism Economics forecast released earlier this month, about 267.8 million people are expected to visit California this year, a drop of 0.7%. Beteta said her organization is looking at investing more in domestic travel as it prepares for its next board meeting on June 3.
She added that 83% of the state's visitor spending is domestic.
'I'm going to take that as good news, as we have to look at shifting and managing the global environment right now,' Beteta said. 'There's a lot of places, like Hawaii for example, that don't have the accessibility of the domestic market, much less an in-state market. With 40 million Californians, we can always turn to the backyard in times of crisis.'
Huntington Beach saw $580 million in visitor spending in 2024, a new record, per the Visit HB Visitor Economic Impact Overview. The city welcomed 2.34 million non-Orange County visitors, a 4.4% increase over the year before, and tourism accounts for nearly 10% of the city's total employment.
Tommy Martinez from Tripadvisor offered positive thinking for the future of Surf City during his talk about millennial and Gen Z travel trends.
The percentage of Gen Z and millennials surveyed who considered coastal beaches as an ideal vacation spot were 64% and 65% respectively, according to the Tripadvisor Travel through Life report for 2024. A sizable percentage of those generations surveyed also considered mountain ranges and rural countrysides as interesting places to visit.
'It's completely different,' Martinez said. 'When I was in the Y2K era, it was all [Las] Vegas, all the time.'
Cindy Decker from Tourism Economics presented attendees with information on drivers and roadblocks for travel, while Miller also engaged in a sit-down discussion with U.S. men's volleyball national team coach Karch Kiraly. The event was attended by city leaders including Mayor Pat Burns and City Manager Travis Hopkins.
Miller and Kiraly discussed the news that Honda Center in Anaheim has been announced as the indoor volleyball venue for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Miller noted that Huntington Beach, though not selected as an Olympic venue, is the closest beach to nearby Disneyland, at just more than 11 miles away.
He called the Tripadvisor survey numbers reassuring.
'The beach is a huge, huge destination driver, and we have that,' Miller said. 'We have a quarter of the beaches in Orange County.'
The summit concluded with Hayley Barg, culture and engagement manager at the Waterfront Beach Resort, a Hilton Hotel, receiving the Surf City USA Industry Leader Award for her contributions to the local tourism community.
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