On last week’s Z107.7 Up Close Show, host Gary Daigneault spoke with Twentynine Palms Tourism Business Improvement District Board Member Ashton Ramsey, and Marketing Director Breanne Dusastre.
Daigneault asked Dusastre to define the TBID, to which she said:
“You can form a ‘TBID’ or Tourism Business Improvement District under two different parking area and business improvement laws in the state of California. I’d love to share a background in terms of how and why Twentynine Palms has a TBID. And I think it’s a neat story because it began to develop in a really sort of organic way.
Certainly no shortage of great ideas in terms of marketing programs or events, for example. The question, of course, comes down to funding. How will we fund all of this?
And then began the conversations with the city and then came the uncovering of this TBID model. So it was in October of 2017 that the City of Twentynine Palms established the TBID, Which is the Tourism Business Improvement District branded as ‘Visit Twentynine Palms.’ So Visit Twentynine Palms is TBID.
We are all in one. And everything that we do is funded very uniquely through a special tourism tax that is levied across the city.
The overnight visitors are paying a 1.5% T-Bid assessment tax on top of their nightly room rate.
So every dollar that is generated or that we collect through that 1.5% T-Bid assessment which again is paid by the overnight visitors is to be reinvested and put back towards marketing programs and initiatives again to promote the Twentynine Palms as a fabulous travel destination in the desert and fund all kinds of different programs and initiatives.”
You can listen to their full conversation below, and subscribe to our podcasts as well.
