The Legislature hereby finds and declares all of the following:

(a) Tourism is among California’s biggest industries, contributing over fifty-two billion dollars ($52,000,000,000) to the state economy and employing nearly 700,000 Californians in 1995.

(b) In order to retain and expand the tourism industry in California, it is necessary to market travel to and within California.

(c) State funding, while an important component of marketing, has been unable to generate sufficient funds to meet the threshold levels of funding necessary to reverse recent losses of California’s tourism market share.

(d) In regard to the need for a cooperative partnership between business and industry:

(1) It is in the state’s public interest and vital to the welfare of the state’s economy to expand the market for, and develop, California tourism through a cooperative partnership funded in part by the state that will allow generic promotion and communication programs.

(2) The mechanism established by this chapter is intended to play a unique role in advancing the opportunity to expand tourism in California, and it is intended to increase the opportunity for tourism to the benefit of the tourism industry and the consumers of the State of California.

(3) Programs implemented pursuant to this chapter are intended to complement the marketing activities of individual competitors within the tourism industry.

(4) While it is recognized that smaller businesses participating in the tourism market often lack the resources or market power to conduct these activities on their own, the programs are intended to be of benefit to businesses of all sizes.

(5) These programs are not intended to, and they do not, impede the right or ability of individual businesses to conduct activities designed to increase the tourism market generally or their own respective shares of the California tourism market, and nothing in the mechanism established by this chapter shall prevent an individual business or participant in the industry from seeking to expand its market through alternative or complementary means, or both.

(6) (A) An individual business’s own advertising initiatives are typically designed to increase its share of the California tourism market rather than to increase or expand the overall size of that market.

(B) In contrast, generic promotion of California as a tourism destination is intended and designed to maintain or increase the overall demand for California tourism and to maintain or increase the size of that market, often by utilizing promotional methods and techniques that individual businesses typically are unable, or have no incentive, to employ.

(7) This chapter creates a mechanism to fund generic promotions that, pursuant to the required supervision and oversight of the director as specified in this chapter, further specific state governmental goals, as established by the Legislature, and result in a promotion program that produces nonideological and commercial communication that bears the characteristics of, and is entitled to all the privileges and protections of, government speech.

(8) The programs implemented pursuant to this chapter shall be carried out in an effective and coordinated manner that is designed to strengthen the tourism industry and the state’s economy as a whole.

(9) Independent evaluation of the effectiveness of the programs will assist the Legislature in ensuring that the objectives of the programs as set out in this section are met.

(e) An industry-approved assessment provides a private-sector financing mechanism that, in partnership with state funding, will provide the amount of marketing necessary to increase tourism marketing expenditures by California.

(f) The goal of the assessments is to assess the least amount per business, in the least intrusive manner, spread across the greatest practical number of tourism industry segments.

(g) The California Travel and Tourism Commission shall target an amount determined to be sufficient to market effectively travel and tourism to and within the state.

(h) In the course of developing its written marketing plan pursuant to Section 13995.45, the California Travel and Tourism Commission shall, to the maximum extent feasible, do both of the following:

(1) Seek advice and recommendations from all segments of California’s travel and tourism industry and from all geographic regions of the state.

(2) Harmonize, as appropriate, its marketing plan with the travel and tourism marketing activities and objectives of the various industry segments and geographic regions.

(i) The California Travel and Tourism Commission’s marketing budget shall be spent principally to bring travelers and tourists into the state. No more than 15 percent of the commission’s assessed funds in any year shall be spent to promote travel within California, unless approved by at least two-thirds of the commissioners.

(Amended by Stats. 2016, Ch. 634, Sec. 9. (SB 1479) Effective January 1, 2017.)