Love Catalina Island’s portion of the transient occupancy tax (short term rental tax) for Fiscal Year 2023 is $1,826,003, according to the City Council staff report by City Manager David Maistros. (That’s a decrease of $82,803 from Fiscal Year 2022, according to the calculator.)
Visitor numbers, on the other hand, increased from 978,178 in Fiscal Year 2022 to 1,078,154 in Fiscal Year 2023, according to Maistros’ report. (That’s an increase of 99,976 visitors, according to the calculator.)
The Avalon City Council on Tuesday, Nov. 28, received and filed Love Catalina Tourism Authority’s annual report. Love Catalina (also known as the Catalina Island Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau) gets 22% of the city’s annual transient occupancy tax to promote tourism.
During his presentation to the council, Love Catalina President and CEO Jim Luttjohann said that Catalina had returned to near-normal visitor volume.
“This year, we returned to pre-Covid levels of visitors despite some months of poor weather impacting transportation and visitors’ willingness to travel,” Luttjohann said.
He said the cruise passenger count showed the largest amount of growth. Luttjohann attributed that to two reasons: cruise ships were back to full capacity and the return of reoccurring calls from three cruise lines to Avalon.
Luttjohann also said that hotel occupancy was up from pre Covid-19 levels.
According to Luttjohann, tourism driven revenues were down 2%, yet well above pre COVID levels.
According to his slide presentation to the council:
- Love Catalina budget: $2,283,100
- Actual revenue: $2,352,525
- TOT funds: $1,822,100
- Expenses: $2,469,000
- Program services: $2,045,000
- Music related expenditures: $45,000
- Salaries and benefits: $673,510. That figure represented 28.6% of the costs for Love Catalina.
Luttjohann said that included staff, but not contractors.
In 2021, Love Catalina received the loan of $99,306 from the Small Business Association as part of the Payroll Protection Program, according to the Notes to Financial Statements for June 30, 2023 and 2022. The loan would be forgiven as long as the money was used to cover payroll costs and certain specified non-payroll costs. “On July 6,2021, CICCVB received forgiveness of the full $99,306 PPP loan,” according to the Notes to Financial Statements.
“On June 9,2020, CICCVB successfully secured a $150,000 Small Business Association loan under the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. Proceeds are to be used as working capital to alleviate injury caused by the disaster, in this case the COVID-1 9 pandemic,” according to the Notes to Financial Statements.
“The loans is secured by deposit accounts, receivables, and equipment. It is payable in monthly installments including principal and interest of $641 beginning 12 months from the date of the promissory note. The note bears interest at 2.75% and the balance of principal and interest will be payable 30 years from the date of the promissory note. Repayment of the EIDL was delayed until December 2022, but interest still accrued during the deferment period,” according to the Notes to Financial Statements.
