Tuesday, July 08, 2014

The Visitor Model

Don't really know what things are like in Cleveland, but my local urban hellhole really needs to transition away from the "attract visitors at any cost" model. Yeah it's great to be able to soak the tourists with hotel taxes and similar, but it's not clear what the point is when those taxes just get plowed back into tax breaks for more hotels and to fund tourism marketing campaigns. Make it a nice(r) place to live - give your actual residents more nice things - and you have local demand/expenditures. You don't have to bribe people to visit.