Arcata hotels approve $700,000 gift card plan to boost stays

Arcata hotel owners approved a promotion that would hand out 6,250 prepaid Visa gift cards, each worth $100, in a bid to lure more overnight visitors and fill rooms across the city’s lodging strip.

The Arcata Lodging Alliance board signed off on the plan last Friday after discussing it at an April 13 Zoom meeting. The promotional package would be aimed at travelers within a four- to five-hour drive of Humboldt County and is designed to spark multi-night stays by pairing a consumer incentive with targeted advertising. The memo behind the proposal put the broader marketing effort at $896,000, while the gift cards alone would total more than $700,000.

Supporters say the idea is a direct way to lift occupancy in a hospitality market that has struggled in recent years. Meredith Matthews, executive director of the Humboldt Lodging Alliance, said she believed the program was “straightforward and measurable,” and said the organization would put controls and reporting requirements in place.

The vote was not unanimous. Hotel Arcata General Manager Sherrie Potter cast the lone dissent in the 2-1 decision and said she had “grave concerns” about how the money could be managed and whether there was enough oversight to prevent misuse. A public commenter also blasted the proposal as a “gross misuse of funds,” arguing that hotel owners or employees should not control gift card distribution without stronger safeguards.

The Arcata Lodging Alliance is made up of seven hotels and operates under the Humboldt Lodging Alliance, a 501(c)(6) California nonprofit that describes itself as the official owners’ association for the county lodging industry. HLA says its work includes marketing outside Humboldt County, funding visitor-drawing events and supporting projects that bring in tourists. Its Arcata-area board has three lodging representatives: Shailesh Patel of Hampton Inn and Suites, Sherrie Potter of Hotel Arcata and Meenal Patel of Comfort Inn.

That matters in Arcata because room nights directly feed the tax base. The city’s transient occupancy tax instructions list the current rate at 12 percent, with 10 percent going to the city and 2 percent to the county tourism BID. HLA says its board meets quarterly and its executive committee meets monthly, part of a structure built to put “heads in beds.”

The plan now sits at the center of a familiar Humboldt County debate: how aggressively local lodging should be marketed, how much risk hotel owners should take on, and what proof they will owe the public if a six-figure incentive package fails to deliver new spending instead of rewarding travelers who were coming anyway.