By Parker Leavitt | The Republic
Scottsdale taxpayers spent more than $30 million on the city’s contract for tourism promotion over the last four years, but the public may not be getting as much as they should out of the deal, according to a recent city audit.
Auditors questioned the organization’s “rapidly increasing” pay for executives, found errors and irrelevant information in reported data and challenged its policy giving no preference to hotels and businesses located within city borders when promoting tourism.
Experience Scottsdale, formerly the Scottsdale Convention & Visitors Bureau, receives half of the city’s hotel-sales-tax collections each year, which amounted to about $9.4 million in fiscal year 2016. The non-profit organization promotes Scottsdale through national and international marketing campaigns.
