‘We really need visitors’: Los Angeles tourism has fallen off a cliff

Visiting L.A. is very expensive.  Last week, the city council decided to raise the minimum wage for workers in the tourist industry to $30 an hour.  Only the very rich will be able to visit this slum of a city.  Tourists get to see street after street—all of Hollywood crammed filled with homeless.  Drugs are everywhere.  Crime is overlooked.  Illegal aliens own the streets.  Visit USC or UCLA and you are visited a Jew hating campus, as if you were in Gaza.  During the wildfires, many local hotels opened their doors to displaced residents, but also saw a dramatic decrease in reservations. According to a recent article in the San Diego Union-Tribune, canceled bookings at the Georgian, a boutique ocean-view hotel in Santa Monica, cost the property nearly $700,000. Other areas are feeling the squeeze, as well.

Kiely notes that January and February saw an extreme drop in hotel bookings in West Hollywood.

“We saw it decrease from about 75% occupancy to around 20% the week of the fires,” Kiely says, noting that while March was a “rebuilding” month, April saw a bounceback and May numbers look good as well.

Air travel has dropped, too. According to data from Los Angeles World Airports, or LAWA, international bookings in March 2025 were down 3.5% from last year. Data from Visit California supports the trend: A recent report states that in March 2025, California welcomed 494,952 nonresident international arrivals, a decline of 11% year over year.”

Why pay money as a tourist to visit a Third World Country?  It is cheaper to visit Cambodia.

Expensive, dirty, hard to get round.  Los Angeles is a place to be ignored not explored.

‘We really need visitors’: Los Angeles tourism has fallen off a cliff

Ripple effects from the pandemic and wildfires continue to hurt the industry

By Karen Palmer, SFGATE,  5/19/25   https://www.sfgate.com/la/article/tourism-spending-down-los-angeles-20323203.php

Four months after devastating wildfires ripped through the Pacific Palisades, Malibu and Altadena, Los Angeles is still reeling. Rebuilding inches along, but with limited access up the Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu businesses are reporting million-dollar losses. Further east, a slower cleanup is underway while homeowners insurance woes continue and legacy businesses try to figure out what’s next. And in the bigger picture, one of the city’s main sources of revenue is struggling, too: tourism.

The downturn, which can be seen in reduced hotel bookings, restaurant business and air travel coming into LAX, comes as Los Angeles is gearing up for some of the biggest events in its history: Over the next two years, LA is slated to host Super Bowl 61, the FIFA World Cup, the NBA All-Star Game and the Women’s Open golf championship. Then, in 2028, the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games come to town. And while normally these large-scale events would be a boon for any city, the lack of tourism dollars now could mean trouble for what’s to come.

“As one of the world’s most diverse and welcoming destinations — as well as one of the primary gateways to the United States — Los Angeles has long enjoyed strong visitation from around the globe. With more than 510,000 Angelenos and over 1,000 local businesses relying on tourism for their livelihoods, we are concerned about any factors that could negatively impact perceptions of the U.S. as a preferred travel destination,” the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board said in a statement to SFGATE. 

Recent marketing has tried to overcome the perception that the city is unsafe or inaccessible after the fires. The message, shared across multiple tourism-focused groups like Visit California, the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board and Visit West Hollywood, is that LA is open for business and ready for visitors to return.

“We are 100% open and 100% welcoming to visitors to come to West Hollywood and all of Southern California,” Tom Kiely, chief executive officer of Visit West Hollywood, tells SFGATE. “For the most part, especially in West Hollywood, the infrastructure that tourists would see, like hotels and restaurants, were untouched and undamaged by the fires.”

“It’s natural that after any sort of disaster, if you’re not in the area and seeing the day-to-day, you wouldn’t realize that 98% of Los Angeles is still open, with minimal exceptions,” Pacific Palisades native and local travel expert Gabe Saglie tells SFGATE. “Those iconic landmarks, all of our great restaurants are still open.”

Multiple other factors, such as the perception of President Donald Trump’s administration and the tariffs it’s placing on other countries, are also at play. 

Fewer bookings, empty streets

During the wildfires, many local hotels opened their doors to displaced residents, but also saw a dramatic decrease in reservations. According to a recent article in the San Diego Union-Tribune, canceled bookings at the Georgian, a boutique ocean-view hotel in Santa Monica, cost the property nearly $700,000. Other areas are feeling the squeeze, as well.

Kiely notes that January and February saw an extreme drop in hotel bookings in West Hollywood.

“We saw it decrease from about 75% occupancy to around 20% the week of the fires,” Kiely says, noting that while March was a “rebuilding” month, April saw a bounceback and May numbers look good as well.

Air travel has dropped, too. According to data from Los Angeles World Airports, or LAWA, international bookings in March 2025 were down 3.5% from last year. Data from Visit California supports the trend: A recent report states that in March 2025, California welcomed 494,952 nonresident international arrivals, a decline of 11% year over year.