Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, and adopt resolution continuing the Long Beach Tourism Business Improvement Area assessment levy for the period of October 1, 2021 through September 30, 2022; and, authorize City Manager, or designee, to extend the agreement with the Long Beach Area Convention and Visitors Bureau for a one-year term. (Districts 1,2,4,5)
So if there is no objection to that, I'll turn it over. Madam Clerk, please read item 41 and 47. And 41 is a report from economic development. Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record. Conclude the public hearing and Adobe resolution concerning the Long Beach Tourism Business Improvement Area Assessment Levy for the period of October 1st, 2021 through September 30th, 2022, and authorize City Manager to extend the agreement for a one year term. District one, two, four and five. This item requirement of item 47 is a report from City Manager. Recommendation to execute the 20th Amendment to agreement with the Long Beach Area Convention and the Visitor Bureau to extend the agreement by a period of one year and to provide funding in the amount of 4.6 million. Okay. Thank you. Will turn this will turn on the timer and we'll begin. I'd like to introduce Eric Romero, the economic developments business operations officer, and he will introduce the sub speaker. Good evening, honorable mayor and members of the City Council. I'll just do a quick staff report and they will introduce our friends from the CVB. As for the Long Beach Tourism Business Improvement Area was established by the City Council in 2005, allowing for the levy of an annual assessment to be paid by hotels with greater than 30 rooms located in that PBA or tourism business improvement area. And the city contracts with the Convention and Visitors Bureau to manage the tourism and business improvement area. A state law governing this district requires that there's an annual public hearing for any opportunities for the hotel operators to have to protest the assessments or to also practice any of the activities. The proposed activities will focus on promoting and marketing Long Beach as a destination for tourists and conventions. That concludes my public hearing or my my staff report and mayor and council. At this point, we'd like to turn it over to the CVB. They'd like to give you a presentation of all the wonderful things that they've been doing on our behalf over the past year. And so I will turn to Imron and to Steve Goodling to give the rest of the presentation. Good evening, Honorable Mayor and the Council. Long Beach. My name is Imran. I'm here on behalf of the CVB in Long Beach. As the past chair of the Convention and Visitors Bureau. First of all. Here we are coming right out of pandemic, winning the best in the West award for the fifth consecutive year. For the city of Long Beach and the CVB. And the third consecutive time that we have win that for the convention and convention center, Long Beach. The CVB has a economic impact of $1.8 billion that visitors spend, out of which $30.6 million is in t. O. T. Pre-pandemic. We employ over 18,000 people in our sector, the second largest employer in the city of Long Beach after health care. Harris, can you slow down a little bit? I need to breathe in the in the middle of this. Um. Yeah. The second largest soap. In July, we we all were concerned about celebrating our Independence Day. And the CDB stepped up. We partnered with private sector. And I want to give a big shout out to Dan Salus of Harbor Breeze Cruises who helped us partner with us. And, and we were able to celebrate the 4th of July in a big way. 50,000 in-person attendance and 40,000 dude over livestream. Long Beach CVB has been pioneer pioneered the the the streaming and and virtual meetings. We we were the first in the country. To do so. With that said. Finally, we do have on the 30th of November our tree lighting ceremony, and we will expect more people this time. With that, I'm going to hand over to Sam, our vice president of communications, together with them. Good evening. So thanks to the generosity of the City Council, the CVB received $1.25 million to promote the city and really boost boost our marketing and communications during the recovery period. So what we did was we took that funding. We leveraged our strong relationship with Visit California, which is the statewide bid for tourism. And we tripled our investment with a dollar for dollar match and added value value from our platform partners. The result of that was over 100 million impressions across various digital platforms, major ones including Expedia, Kayak, TripAdvisor. Basically, if you are trying to plan a vacation anywhere, you were seeing Long Beach advertising because we were the largest co-op partner with Visit California. We received additional marketing benefits, including being included in their Southern California billboard program, as you can see here, as well as in some of their video commercial advertising nationally, which was a $43 million program that we were rolled into because of our partnership with them this summer. We also launched an original content creation strategy where we highlighted every single corner of the city. So every week we rolled out unique listicles about our cuisine scene, as you can see here, and our Summer Long Beach Stays and Getaways campaign where we created ten or 20 listicles and 20 videos about every corner of the city, publicize them across our social media platforms as well as in the media. So just our initial rollout of our social, our summer campaign, we were printed in 110 national outlets, both in print digital that also appeared on regional news and radio programs, reaching an audience of 146 million people just initially and then throughout the summer that continued to grow. So we took our content that that was performing really well and we transferred it to other platforms as well, including Visit California's travel stories we reached with our Cycle City Story, a million impressions on Google, which broke all of their records. And they're now actually doing a case study on how we have crafted crafted our content because of that. As you can see, our social media platforms are benefiting greatly just from our follower. Growth on Instagram has increased 190% because of our original content, and you will see that across social media platforms promoting the city of Long Beach . We have partnered with influencers over the summer about 12, and we're continuing on with that program forward. And just through the summer we reached 2 million people through that venue. We also partnered with Los Angeles magazine. They wrote five original articles about different aspects of Long Beach on our city, and that reached their audience of 1.4 million people. So lots of great things and we're going to continue going forward. And now we have Paula, who's going to talk about everything we did for members coming out of the pandemic. So as the governor allowed us to have our people back in our desks, back in our doors, um, even though it's outdoor, um, we realized our members needed some additional promotion and that had to. Be via online. So we went out and started filming them. As of today, we have over 100 videos filmed and that includes our hotels, our restaurants and even our convention center as the videos are completed. Our members are able to upload those videos on their own marketing strategy, including their social media platforms and their website. And the greatest thing is that we are also able to utilize them as well and publish them on our site as well. Collectively, we are able to work as a team each and promote our city and our members and our businesses. And just like Sam mentioned, not only are we able to put them on their Instagram or YouTube and our Facebook, but also various of our media outlets. And now we have Kenya with South. So during the pandemic, as groups were canceling, we were able to actually save 30% of our group bookings by booking them into future years . We booked the primary. We booked them primarily into 2024 and 2025 because those were the next open years for the associations we were working with. Year over year growth for us in 2024 increased by 63% and in 2025 by 134%, which gave us a nice head start as we book conventions for those years. In addition to that. Aristotle would say in addition to that, the additional more great news is that as we're talking to our hoteliers, we're hearing that the Rampart increase for next year is a 17% increase for 2022, which is huge for us. Prior to the pandemic, our lead volume was 90 leads or RFP per month, and we're back at that level, which is amazing news for us and our business. These RFPs don't just come to us. We actually have to go out and solicit or associations and organizations to get them. We were the first city to launch in two major markets recently. We just completed two missions in Washington, D.C. and Chicago. We met with over 300 planners and garnered over 50 RFP. We also just completed Grand Prix weekend where we entertain 45 planners. We have traveled to four tradeshows and sorry, four roadshows and 11 trade shows within this last eight weeks. So since Labor Day, we've done that and today our team is actually in Vegas. What you're looking at here is our totally electronic booth that showcases our city in mass effect because of our extensive filming that. Claudia I'm sorry that Paula and Sam talked about. We have a vast library of over tons of videos and 8-K, and that allows us to take advantage of the latest technology. During COVID, it was we it was super important for us to master virtual production. We had to adapt to our clients needs of digital meeting solutions while our competition continues to use static PowerPoint presentations. We are actually using full broadcast capabilities. We're using cutting edge technology that multiple cameras in multiple locations, creating a seamless live event. We use this technology when we did the Long Beach Economic Forum, when we did the 4th of July event that streamed over 50,000 people. And when we did our tree lighting, our next video is going to show you a site that we did virtually, which is becoming a new trend as people are not able to travel as much. And this production catapulted us from one of 13 destinations to the top three. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for joining us today. We're so excited to have you here on our virtual site visit. Hi, guys. Hey, Debbie, how are you? Good to see. You. Thank you so much for for adapting to our need to do this virtually is an. Unusual site visit to have and I do appreciate the team at Long Beach and we look forward to today's journeys. And I just want to show off a little bit in this room because I can control this entire room from my cell phone. All I do is. But I promise you, I did it one time. And you're still on the second floor? No, we came down. We jumped over the railing and landed on the bridge. And there's a bridge that was built just for the convention center. It's called the Rainbow Bridge. Lining the bridge is an English garden that is spec tacular, and then in the center of the bridge is guess what a wine bar is? I am going to turn this over to Charlie, who is our general manager. It's amazing space here. My stage is decorated behind me, red, white and blue. As a matter of fact, the whole terrace was red, white and blue. Last night we had President Biden stay across the street. He was in town. I just want to. Say, I am amazed and astounded at how well you put together this virtual. Tour. Thank you. Bye bye. I am happy to say that we booked this event and we booked four others using a similar format. So it's the video that gets them here. But when they're here, what sells them is the turnkey spaces that save them hundreds of thousands of dollars. We created these turnkey spaces where we reposition the convention center. Now, I'm going to ask Steve to come up and talk to us a little bit more about the repositioning, as well as our competitive market. Thanks again. Good evening. As Kenya mentioned, one of the key things for us has been the repositioning of the convention center and also utilizing the new technologies in virtual streaming. With that, we've noticed, especially over the last several years, we are competing more and more with large big box hotels or another chain called Gaylord, which Marriott Corporation bought a few years ago. These are all inclusive. You basically could put downtown Long Beach under this roof, has the same number of hotel rooms, the same amount of convention space, the amount of exhibit space. So we knew as a facility that we had to migrate into a four star hotel. For many of you, this was our bathrooms in the promenade before our renovation ten years ago. This is what our bathrooms now look like. Again, more of a four star hotel since we're competing with four star hotels more frequently. This was our lobby. This is now our lobby. This was our Terrace Theater. This is now our Terrace Theater. As you can tell, all these spaces have been extremely activated with lighting, chandeliers, paintings, couches, places for people to connect. Our Terrace Theater, just. It looked this way. Now it's this way. We are definitely competing with Gaylord Hotels and big box hotels. This is the bridge, which of course connects both sides of our campus. And what we basically did is we we residential ized the facility. There was a comment made to me by Susie in Africa years ago. She said, Steve, I used to come in here and I'd want to run out. Now I want to stay. We've achieved through the TEDx model looking at spaces and creating turnkey, turnkey events such as the Pacific Ballroom, the Pacific Ballroom. We needed 40,000 square feet for $10 million. We repositioned us, took us from 23% utilization to 83% utilization. And in that same time period, more of our nonprofits in the city were able to use us to raise money for their various groups. And as a city, we got to benefit from this. But as an aside, Sacramento just spent $40 million to build a 40,000 square foot ballroom. And we, through adaptive reuse, did ours in ten. The Cove was another space by the TED conference and now especially with COVID. Having an outdoor space is very critical for special events. And lastly, our Terrace Theater and that performing art area. What does this really mean at the bottom line? Besides, a lot of smiles from customers. If you look at 2013, you go up. Look at that straight line. It's almost like a virgin spaceship. We've gone up 40% in total. The convention center, their revenue in catering has doubled in five years. That's not common. In addition, you can't just have the assets. You have to have the service. Our hotel partners are convention center partners. All of you behind the dais in our city staff. Our customers know it's this, as they call it, unique partnership, which makes us win. So with that. I think in Long Beach, I have found something brand new and really something that for the first time in a very long time has excited me. I have been in the association business for more than 30 years. I've seen a lot of convention centers and Long Beach has thought through every single piece of what the meeting experience should be. And they have created a space that I don't think is duplicated anywhere in the country. We went through a bid process. We're looking at what is a post-COVID meeting look like. We ended up having three finalists. And Long Beach just blew us out of the water. Long Beach has done so much of the work for you. They have invested in just incredible set pieces and decor and lighting grids and things that most associations can afford at most convention centers. We actually pay a decorator to bring in sofas and chairs to create lounge space. We pay decorators to put sets on stage. Don't have to do that at Long Beach. All of that is part of the package and can save millions dollars. I think Long Beach is truly a pioneer in the industry. I think that it is really innovating in ways that are going to set the tone for the entire convention world. I am absolutely now a convert. I mean, I think Long Beach needs to have evangelists, people telling the story. And I think my experience so far, I'm happy to be one of those people who go out and tell the long story. And as Ken, you mentioned that convention booked with us just two weeks ago. Tonight, we also have a very special guest, president of Pima sheriff. Sheriff was here in February, right before the pandemic in March. Sheriff is definitely one of those other evangelists for Long Beach. Sheriff represents 8000 meeting planners that do over a million events a year. Please welcome. Welcome, sheriff. Sheriff. Good evening, Mayor Garcia. Council members, council staff. It really is an honor for me to speak to you. My name is Sheriff Kermit. As you can see up on the screen, my ugly picture. My organization is Pixma, the Professional Convention Management Association. We are a global organization based in Chicago, and we have over 8000 members. Our members plan more than 2 million meetings annually. Our industry just prior to COVID, if it was a country by GDP, would have been the 14th largest country in the world. It was worth $1.07 trillion. Mayor and council. That was just the means to the end. It was not the end. That's actually overspend. But what we do is much more important what we do. And what you're seeing in your city is that we use tourism assets, but really we spur every other industry and of other industries growth for when we bring people together, when we meet face to face, we drive all our businesses. And that's what's so important about what Steve and his team does. I'm not going to repeat all the wonderful things about Long Beach that you've already heard, but I'll tell you a couple of things that I've observed. Long Beach has not been a pioneer. You've actually been a trailblazer. And thank you for your support of the CVB. You've been a trailblazer in what Long Beach has been doing from research, from the trend study. And when you think about it, we foster human connection connections just like you do in this chamber. And every day we bring people together to solve complex problems. And so the atmosphere that Steve and his team has built at the convention center is ideal for fostering human connections. And it is why Long Beach is a leader in the business events industry world over, not just in your city. You talked about competition, and competition is not necessarily in your state. Competition is not necessarily in our country. Competition comes from everywhere in associations and corporations look everywhere to hold their business. So it is critically important that your city is as competitive as possible. And what I'm what I've experience in Long Beach, not only are you trailblazing and setting the standard of today, you're looking ahead and you're keeping your competitors at bay by constantly improving. And that's so, so very important. I also want to address just very quickly before I go on, I know my time is limited that your city , under Steve's leadership, has also shown incredible leadership and thought leadership across the state. They brokered a relationship with Visit California, where visit comes up. All right. I'll stop there. Can I please finish the last thought? Where? Visit California. Become a partner of peace, an industry and mayor that shows Steve's leadership and your leadership as a community. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And let's give a big round of applause to the CVB for that great presentation. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Could we just say thank you to everybody? I know you read a lot of signs. We thought you might enjoy this, too. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And we do have some comments from the council. First, so I'll I'll go ahead and go to the councilman. I'll make some comment after that to Councilman Allen. Yes. Thank you for those signs. That was awesome. And I appreciate that. Just congratulations to the CVB and the Convention Center team for winning the stellar awards. And the reason that you win so many awards is because you have a very unique and strong relationship with the CVB and the center. And I don't know if you guys know, but in most cities, these organizations are at odds. And so here it's so awesome that that we are working hand in hand. The CVB and the Center are great working partners, and I just really greatly appreciate your tree lighting the fireworks that we all got to enjoy on July 4th . And it's so important and much appreciated that you are engaged in the community and you do a lot. To bring businesses into town. And I'm just so grateful for you. It's also apparent, even as a resident, I live right next door to the to the convention center. How much that has gone into repositioning the convention center with the new residential eyes, special event spaces and Long Beach is now competitive, really competitive in this new environment. And we know how engaged you are in the community and you do so much more to bring conventions and tourists into town. And that's so important. And Sheree, thank you. It was good to see you again. I agree with you. And what you said earlier is that, you know, one of the things that we've done as a city when things got tough, like the Japanese are sharpening the iron, that's what we do here. We are just really good at looking at what we can do to be better. And I am so appreciative of everything that this whole team has done here. So thank you. Councilwoman. Councilman in the house. I'm so thrilled and excited to say congratulations to CVB for other awards not only this year, but you continuously seem to back them up. And it makes me so proud to be a Long Beach residents and to have you leading this. Thank you. Thank you for making Long Beach a vital hub for meetings and tourism and for creating jobs for residents. So very, very important. Also, you're also very involved with the community. Thank you so much for on the the wonderful street clean ups neighborhood cleanups that you participated in this past summer and helped us out. And we're out there with shovels and and everything, bags and brooms and everything to be able to clean up our streets. And that really shows community and that really shows that you care. And also, thank you so much for being a sponsor of one of the most traditional holidays, that empire, the Los Muertos that we had on Pine Street. And just knowing that we have such great partners in CVB, I think is amazing and you give so much back to the community. So I want to say thank you to you and congratulations. And one more thing, if I could see those thank you's and hearts, because that was a beautiful photo of that I can't miss. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor Richardson. Just a few. Thoughts. First, I know what the past year has been for the tourism industry. Not only did our local CBP step up for Long Beach, but you stepped up for the whole state of California and led the effort to get our conventions back to the state of California, which drives our local economy. It helps our general fund, our bottom line or public safety services. First. First, thank you for all your leadership that you've shown in the course of the past year. Secondly, it's important to note that not only did you just look out for the convention center, you looked out for the whole city. I saw an incredible video highlighting North Long Beach's recovery and the things that are happening in North Long Beach. And it was incredibly impressive. I was impressed by that. I've never seen our convention center tell visitors to go to North Long Beach. Never has that happen. And so I want to say on behalf of that was an incredibly proud moment, so important on behalf of me and my residents and the work that we're doing. Thank you so much, you and Samantha and everybody who had something something to do with that. Thank you so much for what you've done. The CVB is an incredible asset and you continue to have our support. You continue to show up for our city, and we look forward to continuing to support you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Ciro. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to thank you so much for the presentation and an update and appreciate having your staff do their part so that we can meet them. Because I know that it's been a challenging year and transitions as my colleagues have shared. And it's really great to see you coming back at more than full swing. It's just full circle as not to doing what you all do best. So thank you so much for the great update and looking forward to hearing more and how we're putting Long Beach on the map are making it the destination point. Right. Thank you. Councilman Cooper again. Yes. Go ahead. I forgot a very important and I didn't forget it. Just I was so excited. But one of the things that I really wanted to say is thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for housing our migrant children in your in your house. And that is something that I will will forever be grateful to you for. You provided safety for children that were not feeling safe, and you did it in such an eloquent and such a loving way where you invited the community to feel part of this. And so for that, I want to thank you. Councilman Mongo. Thank you. I want to echo the comments of my colleagues and then also say that my full time job. Many of you know, I work for a government. But recently I had the. Great fortune to learn how to put on a conference of my own out of our county, out in another county. And the work that each of you do with a revolving door of customers who have very little knowledge or experience on these 17 million different components of a conference is really amazing work. And after planning a wedding five years ago and then all these different things to really get to that next level of a conference. My goodness gracious, the different types of people you work with on a daily basis. Congratulations to the amazing skill sets and patience that you must have. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to just say a few words and then we'll go on to the next item for the hearing. I just want to first add that I see so many great friends and supporters and folks who love the city most importantly, and work really hard, not just as CVB in some cases employees or folks who work in our hotels. I see, obviously members of the CVB board that are all out here, folks that are working at the Convention Center every single day. And so I just want to first just personally thank you for your incredible work and a lot of ambassadorship that happens in this in this work. And you're always serving as ambassadors to the city, and it's so very important. I also want to extend just a thank you for the really difficult year and a half. Plus, now that it has been I it was a strong effort made by everyone to transition out of a very, very tough economy and one that was necessary closures that were necessary to keep people safe and healthy and to save lives. And the industry went through a very hard time. When you have hotels that are close and know conventions are your business changes and it becomes becomes very difficult to come up with ways to bounce back in a way that kind of brings everyone along . And I think that all of you have done that very, very well. And I just want to thank you for that. I also want to just note that it has been in many ways a historic year and a half or two years for the CVB. We've gone from entering a incredibly era of growth to an immediate halt of operations to as far as long as I can remember, the a complete shutdown of our hotels and tourism business to then transition to coming back and bringing in a migrant children's shelter. That was a huge federal ask directly from the White House that you all took up and did an incredible job. And quite frankly, the model that was created in large part by many of you has now served as the national model in other places across the country for other shelters. That was a huge piece of of of history that was made as part of our story of the convention center and of our complex, which I'm really proud of. And I'm glad councilman's in the house brought it up. And I think you also know that we hosted the United States at one of your hotels just across the street from the convention center at the Westin. And I know that he looked out his window and shared with a few of us that the city looked great and it was very bright. And he liked all you know, he liked how lit up everything was in the city. And I think the impression that you left on not just him, but his whole team that was in downtown was what was really special, I think for for for for that team and the and the administration to see our city and all the investments that have been that have been made. And I want to just personally also just say and thank the the key CVB team and the board. Many of you are here. I see you. Thank you, Steve. And I've always said you're you know, you're the music man. You know, you are the master of being able to get anything done and and always put it together. And I also think it's important, as you know, as we thank the CVB team, led by by incredible Steve Goodling, your counterpart in running the facilities. And I think Charlie is here to see Charlie there. You know, Charlie, I know. I know. This is a CVB presentation and you're on the the operations facility with with with RSM. However, that partnership and your leadership of the team that runs all the facilities is incredible. And I think this is as much a testament to all of your work and your team as it is to the work that the CVB does as well. So just congratulations and we appreciate this this presentation. And thank you all for for being here today. And with that, we have two votes. Let's take them separately. We have the first vote, which is the the piece of 40 item 41 that was read by the clerk. I have a motion and the second is a public comment on this note with cast our votes. Councilwoman Ellen. Emotion is key.