Thursday, July 17, 2025
San Diego is strategically developing tourism with syergistic investment in our significant sporting and cultural events. The programs have been initiated by the San Diego Tourism Marketing District (TMD) to increase hotel nights sold and economic growth in the area.

Strategic Investment by San Diego Tourism Marketing District

The San Diego Tourism Marketing District, which is supported by a sales tax on properties with 70 or more rooms, is a big part of the effort to grow San Diego’s tourism business. The San Diego TMD re-deploys some of this money in the form of marketing campaigns and major event sponsorships, which ultimately generate visitors from outside the region, primarily during non-peak periods.

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For the fiscal year 2026, the oversight group wants to spend about $50 million on groups and events that hold significant promise for boosting hotel stays. Nearly $48 million of those dollars are designated to go straight to the San Diego Tourism Authority, which sells San Diego on the world market as a world-renowned travel destination.

Highlighting San Diego TMD Hotel Event Funding

The TMD hotel event-funding model funds some of the best-attended events that have brought and continue to bring hundreds of thousands of people to our region. There is, though: The Major League Pickleball tournament and WWE wrestling at Petco Park, to be precise. Those new events will help make up for existing losses, such as no longer being able to play home games at home or having to reboot the Holiday Bowl, the California State Games and the Rady Children’s Invitational basketball tournament. Those well-attended athletics conventions were funded through $1.76M in San Diego TMD lodging event funding for Sports San Diego.

“We established the criteria with our stakeholders and that caught all of those cultural events and then the other 50 percent was the TMD was going to fund that (up to a total $250,000),” Schaefer said in an explanation and added “The San Diego Tourism Marketing District spends out over $1.6 million in San Diego TMD hotel event funding for cultural events.” The proposal also supports major events such as the Mission Bayfest music festival, the San Diego Food and Wine Festival, the Gator by the Bay Mardi Gras festival and the San Diego Open tennis championship.

Economic Impact and ROI of the San Diego Tourism Marketing District

TMD virtual 30-day funded events will generate approximately 6.8 million hotel room nights annually, and over $1.47 billion in hotel room revenues. Hotel Events Overnight attendees from TMD supported hotel events mean a big boost in not just hotel rooms but people dining in restaurants, shopping in stores, visiting area attractions and directly or indirectly supporting all the businesses and employees that make up the regional economy.
Bring in more visitors in our hotels and fill up more public rooms and use the city’s transient occupancy tax (TOT) dollars to support vital community services such as parks, infrastructure, public safety, and transportation. The San Diego Tourism Marketing District would accomplish this by leveraging event funding so that tourism money can contribute to broader enhancements for our community.

Legal Barriers and Community Watch

Critics of the 2% charge for the San Diego TMD have filed lawsuits alleging it is a tax that should be approved by voters. The appeal, however, shot down in court every time, largely under the Tourism Improvement District statutes that California has.
Led from accountability and transparency, the Tourism Marketing District for San Diego has rigorous oversight and transparent reporting mechanisms in place to ensure the greatest community support possible. The practice of monitoring expenditures and outcomes routinely had effectively staved off controversy and maintained industry and public support for the San Diego TMD.
San Diego TMD hotel event funding tourism supports some 214,000 area jobs. SDTMD investments create jobs in hotels, food service, event planning, and retail that generate long-term economic benefits and stability for residents.

Legal Challenges and Community Oversight of San Diego TMD

The tourism plan for San Diego, developed by the San Diego Tourism Marketing District, centers on the creation of sustainable, world-class event experiences, which drive incremental visitors to the destination during off-peak seasons. That way overpopulation and the numbers-swings between season isn’t that much of an issue, plus the city retains it’s charme(my personal opinion at least) and you can still be an economic and quality-of-life factor.

San Diego Tourism TMD Anticipating The Year Ahead

San Diego’s still committed to screwing its way past tourism as an economic panacea — it’s got the San Diego Tourism Marketing District to keep up the good work of enhancing the visitor experience and stemming the attrition of visitors. Spending San Diego TMD hotel event funds strategically is not just about capturing the attention of destination travelers; it is an investment in reliable economic growth we can bank on well-invested hotel event dollars so our city’s not only appealing to travel right now, but also that it will remain that safe haven we cannot fold.
With strong solutions like that, the San Diego Tourism Marketing District continues to stand as the model for cities worldwide on how to not only generate economic benefit from tourism, but also how to build a sustainable and healthy community in the process.

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Thursday, July 17, 2025
Thursday, July 17, 2025
Thursday, July 17, 2025
Thursday, July 17, 2025
Thursday, July 17, 2025
Thursday, July 17, 2025
Thursday, July 17, 2025
Thursday, July 17, 2025

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