Visit Anaheim’s new CEO sees golden decade of opportunity for city – Orange County Register

Mike Waterman, the new president and CEO of Visit Anaheim, talks about the challenges of his new job in the organization’s Anaheim office on Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Visit Anaheim’s new CEO Mike Waterman says opportunity is afoot for the city’s tourism industry in the coming decade, when global events such as the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the 2028 Olympics and more come to Southern California and their spillover brings visitors into Anaheim.

“It’s the golden decade of opportunity,” Waterman said.

Those events, combined with the 2027 Super Bowl at SoFi Stadium and billions in investment to expand the Disneyland Resort and build OCVibe, which aims to be the entertainment center for Orange County, present a chance to drastically increase the number of visitors in Anaheim and bring in more money to the city and local businesses.

The city already sees upwards of 25 million people a year and those investments and events are poised to bring in millions beyond that.

The tourism industry veteran took over Visit Anaheim in late April. The organization, which markets the city and books the Anaheim Convention Center, is in the midst of an evolving relationship with the city.

Waterman joined Visit Anaheim after the California State Auditor released the results of a probe of public money sent to the organization and the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce. Following that state audit, the city and Visit Anaheim are working on a new contract that is expected to include better oversight policies and performance indicators.

The City Council in June voted to create a board that will help monitor tourism dollar spending and make recommendations. Waterman will be one of its seven members and has welcomed the changes the city has sought to comply with the auditors’ recommendations.

Visit Anaheim is funded by getting three-quarters of all the money that flows through the Anaheim Tourism Improvement District (the rest of it goes toward transportation improvements in the resort area). The tourism district now collects more than $30 million a year from a 2% extra that hotel guests pay on top of their nightly room rates at 94 participating hotels in the city.

The goal of the tourism bureau is to get visitors to make Anaheim their choice for hotel stays so that the city, and Visit Anaheim, get the revenue. While here, travelers may visit other destinations in Southern California, but the key is keeping those visitors lodged in Anaheim, Waterman said.

Waterman’s job is selling the city to tourists, but he says he also wants to show Anaheim residents the benefits tourism brings. Those visitors, he said, help lessen the burden on residents to pay for city services and they also support new amenities and restaurants the locals enjoy.

The city’s finance director during a budget meeting in June told the council that Anaheim residents pay 33% less for local services because of money the city gets from tourism. And Strong Water Anaheim, a tiki bar in downtown enjoyed by locals and visitors, was a 2024 James Beard Award finalist, the only one in the county.

“Our job is to create economic impact through tourism,” Waterman said. “But ultimately it’s to improve the quality of life for those folks who live in the area.”

Another part of his job is restoring the brand of Visit Anaheim, Waterman said.

“We made a couple mistakes in the last couple of years,” Waterman said, apologizing to the City Council recently. “We apologize for that and I assure you under my watch that will not happen again.”

According to state auditors, the marketing bureau had improperly contracted with the Chamber of Commerce to use some tourism funds for political advocacy and influence, including supporting resort-friendly candidates. Auditors said staff at Visit Anaheim told them that the transaction was a “verbal agreement” between former Visit Anaheim CEO Jay Burress and the former president of the chamber.

Waterman said it wasn’t a handshake agreement and there was a contract in place, but the mistake was not getting board approval for its work with the chamber. Burress, who left Visit Anaheim in November after leading the organization since 2013, did not respond to calls seeking comment.

“That happened several years ago,” Waterman said. “It happened way before my time and you know my job, ultimately, is to address it and put it behind us and guarantee it’s never going to happen again and move forward.”

Visitors pay more for stays

When the City Council was voting earlier this year to approve the DisneylandForward project, which allows significant new development at the resort’s theme parks and hotels, the city got a critical promise from Disneyland President Ken Potrock that it will take a leadership role in advocating for the city’s efforts to use some of the Anaheim Tourism Improvement District’s money to fund affordable housing projects.

“We think that it is a wonderful solution to creating a sustainable flow of funds into affordable housing,” Potrock said at the April 16 City Council meeting. “If we can do that, where there’s a set amount set aside each year for that as a sustainable revenue stream, then that money can be bonded and generate, again, a very high multiple of other opportunities for investment.”

Disney represents about a third of the total vote for any changes that would come to the tourism district.

Waterman says that commitment from Disney was big and those preliminary conversations are happening now with the city for how the district could be changed. Those changes include possibly adding short-term rentals, such as stays booked with Airbnb, to be included in the district or even raising the percentage it collects on nightly rates.

“If we can move from two to four or four and a half (percent) and then take a percentage of that and peel it off for some form of affordable housing project, to me that makes a lot of sense,” Waterman said. “So we’re looking at it not from a who’s going to take a hit, but more like how can we remodel the program.”

What Anaheim’s tourism district charges is currently on the lower end for the county. Newport Beach charges 5% and Huntington Beach just raised it to 6% for hotel stays.

“It’s expensive to live in California,” Waterman said. “I know that and our workers who work in the resorts and the restaurants and the hotels know that. So if we can fix this, if we can create a plan to fund sustainable affordable housing, I think everybody wins and we’re just trying to figure that out.”

More competition

Waterman was the chief sales officer for Visit Orlando, another visitor marketing bureau. Orlando is near the Walt Disney World Resort and Waterman says his relationship with Disney on the East Coast gave him a head start with getting to know its leaders on the West Coast.

He spent four years working in Houston for that city’s visitors bureau when it hosted a Super Bowl and he had a long career prior at Marriott International.

Visit Anaheim has just launched a new campaign “The Greatest Luxury of All” to entice travelers looking for upscale experiences. Higher room rates at hotels travelers might stay at like The Westin and the JW Marriott Anaheim bring in more money for the city and Visit Anaheim than stays at lower-cost hotels. It also launched a $1 million program that pays its member hotels to attract group events by subsidizing some costs, such as food and beverage.

Now that the pandemic is in the rearview mirror for the tourism industry, “everyone is a competitor,” Waterman said.

“You can’t turn your TV on at night and not see somebody advertising come to their destination,” he said. “Whether it’s San Diego, Nashville or Asheville. So for us to remain competitive, we really have to continue to be top of mind in awareness marketing missions, client events, everything we possibly can.”