New Visit Anaheim CEO Pledges Fresh Start After Controversy

29.06.2024 - 13:17 / skift.com / Dawit Habtemariam

Becoming the top tourism boss for Anaheim ought to be a fairy tale dream, given that Disney plans to invest $2 billion in enhancing the city’s flagship attraction there. But Mike Waterman, who was named CEO ofVisit Anaheim in April, has some tough issues to tackle.

Waterman’s predecessor, Jay Burress, resigned last November after allegations of wrongdoing at the destination marketing organization.

In January, California published a scathing audit of Visit Anaheim’s activities, finding oversight failures. Key findings included:

Waterman said he felt confident he could get past the controversies.

“My predecessor got caught up in some questionable activity, and there were some opportunities for me to come in and sort of apologize and say, it’s not going to happen again,” Waterman said.

“Bottom line is Jay didn’t do anything wrong,” Waterman said. “He just should have gotten board approval, and he didn’t. And unfortunately, that’s where it became problematic. If he had done that, it would’ve been a non-issue.”

As the new CEO, Waterman must help ensure that Visit Anaheim is fully transparent.

“I’ve come in [with] three principles,” he told Skift. “We’re going to be much more transparent, we’re going to be better communicators, and we’re going to be much more strategic in our approach towards growing the TID [tourist improvement district].”

Anaheim’s city council recently instituted an advisory board to oversee Visit Anaheim, which was a recommendation from the state auditor.

Waterman clarified that many tourism improvement districts across the U.S. have advisory boards similar to this. These boards aren’t hands-on with oversight, he said, but are instead mainly about ensuring that best practices are in place. They also ensure that data is shared transparently and accurately with government officials.

Visit Anaheim now has a seven-person advisory board. Four members will be from the city, including the city manager and the Anaheim Convention Center CEO. Visit Anaheim gets to appoint the other members.

“It’s a group that meets twice a year and advises the city council on all things Visit Anaheim,” Waterman said. “This board will bring [city officials] back to the table, so to speak, to better understand how we spend money and how we strategize around our business plan.”

The city has chosen to maintain Visit Anaheim’s use of a tourism improvement district funding model. Under this model, city hotels charge guests an assessment fee that can only be used for tourism promotion and marketing. The city can’t redirect this income toward other purposes.

That model gives tourism bureaus more predictability over their funding than the traditional bed tax funding model, which is more prone to annual politicking. The