Planning a trip? This Central Coast city will pay you to visit
It can pay to visit the Santa Maria Valley — at least through March.
Visitors could get $100 for a two-night consecutive stay in Santa Maria Valley hotels under a special stimulus program that has proven as popular as the area’s tri-tip, wines and strawberries.
Media outlets began reporting about the unique “stimulus” offer earlier this week, and it quickly spread throughout the state and beyond.
“This California town will pay you visit,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported. “Take a trip to Santa Maria and get paid,” a Bakersfield television station said. “Looking for travel ideas? A California town is paying people to visit,” an Ohio television station reported.
“The response has been stronger (and faster) than we had originally expected,” said Glenn Morris, president and chief executive officer of the Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce and Visitor & Convention Bureau.
Morris said the initial promotion budget called for distributing 500 gift cards between this weekend and the end of March.
“The last update I got showed that we have already had more than 200 inquiries,” Morris said. “Of course, those need to turn into actual stays before we give them the card, and not all of the inquiries will qualify, but at least we know people are hearing about and thinking about the Santa Maria Valley.”
“Claim your stimulus,” the organization’s website states. “Book a minimum two-night stay in the Santa Maria Valley between now and March 31, and we’ll give you $100 to spend while you’re here at local restaurants, breweries, wineries and attractions.”
The Central Coast hospitality industry has suffered with restrictions related to COVID-19.
The chamber of commerce received nearly $700,000 from the city for the current fiscal year, but funding for the tourist attraction effort doesn’t use Santa Maria money. Instead, the funding comes from a special tourism marketing district created by hotels and funded by a fee assessed for rented hotel rooms.
Hotels formed the Santa Maria Tourism Marketing District, just renewed for another seven years, to assess a 2% surcharge on room stays, with proceeds used to market the Santa Maria to attract visitors.
The chamber of commerce manages the tourism marketing district.
When the idea for the tourism promotion program arose, officials explored a few options such as purchasing gift cards directly from local businesses and letting the visitors choose from the pool.
For the sake of simplicity, they ultimately decided to use generic Visa pre-paid cards.
“We are strongly encouraging that the cards be used in town, but there’s ultimately no way for us to be able to track or guarantee that,” Morris said, adding that the rules can be found on the website.
The program provided a secondary boost since the gift cards were purchased from a fundraiser by St. Mary of the Assumption School, Morris said.
The state’s public health order from Jan. 6 calls upon Californians to avoid nonessential travel to anywhere more than 120 miles from home, or to other states or countries.
“Avoiding travel reduces the risk of virus transmission, including by reducing the risk that new sources of infection and, potentially, new virus strains will be introduced to California,” the state said.
Morris said the stimulus program campaign makes a really strong point that while the community welcomes visitors, they should be respectful and follow the well-known safe travel standards, including mask wearing, social distancing and hand washing.