At a recent Town Hall in Aromas, a resident asked me to describe the vision for tourism as an economic driver in San Benito County.
I explained how it all starts with Pinnacles National Park. If we are going to reach our potential as a getaway destination, we must fully embrace this local gem attracting more than 350,000 visitors annually.
Further, we must strategize on ways to leverage Pinnacles to spark interest in other attractions and businesses—so we can market ourselves as a 3- or 4-day getaway destination.
Ultimately, we can get to a place where people come to Pinnacles one or two days, then spend two to three days choosing from other key attractions, finishing with an afternoon or evening on the wine trail if they so choose.
In order to take that getaway leap, it’s imperative to foster the building of more hotels, and I will eventually explain how we can speed the process through a new Hotel Incentive Program in the works now.
But first, how do we focus on tourism as an economic driver?
I often repeat this analogy: Think of Pinnacles as the anchor store drawing people into a mall. Once those people are interested in the mall—in this case, San Benito County—they will notice other interesting places to visit.
Places like the San Juan Bautista State Historic Park, the Mission, De Anza Trail, Fremont Peak State Park, Hollister Hills State Recreation Area, McAlpine Lake & Park, Thousand Trails campground, the Cienega Wine Trail, other niche wineries, and San Juan Oaks Golf Club, to name some.
Further prospects for tourism opportunities include destinations where urban residents can experience a ranching lifestyle, guided hunting tours, use of the county’s new hipcamp ordinance allowing camping on private lands, scenic motorcycle rides and the regional park under development near Hollister High.
Once visitors are here—with a target demographic of Bay Area and Central Coast residents—they will spend money at existing businesses, and visitation growth will spur the opening of more business to support the tourism industry. The trickle-down potential for ancillary business growth—like more good restaurants we all want—is tremendous. Our downtowns will bustle.
Of course, if people are going to stay for a few days, we need more hotels. The newer hotels in Hollister are filled on a regular basis, largely due to Pinnacles. So even without tourism growth, there’s a need for more hotels right now. With aspirations to grow the industry, there’s a huge need.
That said, the San Benito County Tourism Advisory Committee—appointed by the County Board—is creating a new Hotel Incentive Program for the unincorporated areas. Supervisor Dom Zanger and I proposed the Hotel Incentive Program with expectations to largely replicate concepts used in Hollister and other jurisdictions.
An ad hoc committee of the tourism committee itself has been working through more detailed recommendations, and the latest iteration is expected in August. Generally, discussions are focused on establishing a policy to reimburse new hotels—or possibly major renovations of existing hotels—a portion of the Transient Occupancy Tax (“Hotel Tax”) as a financial incentive to start these new businesses or renovate existing ones.
Hollister’s program calls for reimbursing 70% of TOT up to $2 million. Those are fairly standard numbers—while inflation in recent years may play a role on specific figures—and there are other options under consideration such as eligible hotel standards.
We’re getting close to finalizing a recommendation, and I’m excited to have it brought to the county board this fall for consideration and public feedback.
We should not sell ourselves short with tourism. There are just 63 national parks throughout the nation, and one of them is here. We are Home of Pinnacles National Park, and recruiting more hotels is the launchpad to take that leap as a true getaway destination.
Supervisor Kollin Kosmicki represents District 2 on the San Benito County Board of Supervisors.
