Melissa Kurry was re-appointed to the tourism board in Cayucos.
County Supervisors have re-appointed a local woman to the tourism board in Cayucos for another 1-year term.
Supervisors approved appointing Melissa Kurry to the Cayucos Local Area Advisory Board, part of the County Tourism Business Improvement District (CBID). The Cayucos board calls itself the “Visitor Alliance of Cayucos.”
Kurry is a property manager/broker with See Lyon Beach Rentals and Liberty Realty, according to her application for the board. “I have been in property management for 17 years,” she wrote, “and have worked in the hospitality industry for 20 years (including 3 years employed at the Cayucos Beach Inn).”
Kurry said she grew up in Cayucos and has lived there the majority of her life. “Although I [currently] live in Morro Bay,” she wrote in her application, “my only places of employment have been in Cayucos.”
She recently resigned an administrative assistant job with the Visitor’s Alliance and after changing her role with See Lyon, said she was ready to join the Visitor’s Alliance board.
The Alliance is one of seven local TBID boards under the County’s assessment district covering the unincorporated towns, which is funded by a 2% per room night tax on lodging businesses — motels, hotels, B&Bs and vacation rentals.
Half of the money collected in each town — Cayucos, Cambria, Los Osos and San Simeon on the North Coast — goes back to a local advisory board, who decides how best to spend it supporting tourism in their respective communities.
Supervisors first formed the advisory boards in 2011 at the behest of the lodging industry, which asked the County to establish the assessment district.
Businesses can either pay the tax themselves or pass it through to a guest’s bill, as is done with the County’s regular 9% transient occupancy taxes.
So-called bed taxes have taken a huge hit since March when the coronavirus pandemic response first kicked in and the Governor issued a stay-at-home edict and shut down all “non-essential businesses,” motels included.
Along with that came the near total cessation of tourism promotions in keeping with the Governor’s orders, ostensibly to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
