It turns out there are good and bad tourists, and Laguna Beach only wants the good kind, which means overnight guests who stay in hotels.
Not those undesirable daytrippers.
The city’s tourist bureau, aka Visit Laguna Beach, gave its annual report on Tuesday, providing everyone with the chance to badmouth the bad tourists. Essentially, residents believe the city is doing too much promotion of Laguna.
“They are coming. That’s the problem,” said resident Michele Monda. “I’m advocating that we keep Laguna as local as we can – for us.”
The problem is this us-and-them approach is that it’s hard to control in the age of social media. But to the extent that the city can reign in the marketing, the better.
“We need to be very careful how we advertise,” said resident Chris Catsimanes. “You do not try to attract an ever-increasing amount of people that cost us money. You can’t keep them away, but you can surely keep from advertising to those people.”
Catsimanes also lamented that some of “those people” illegally wade in tidepools and generally trash the beaches.
For its part, the City Council avoided characterizing the target audiences but agreed that the city’s marketing arm should be smarter about its outreach. In other words, make sure the 2% bed tax, which now amounts to $1.6 million a year, is put to good use.
“You don’t really need to market Laguna Beach,” said Councilmember Alex Rounaghi. “What we need to do is preserve Laguna Beach and the beauty of what makes it special.”
Rounaghi suggested that Visit Laguna increase its “stewardship role” and decrease any glossy Instagram posts.
There are enough oversaturated glam shots of Laguna already.
