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City subcommittee: economic indicators show steady business growth, tourism stable but room-night leakage persists
Summary
City staff reported steady growth in business licenses and low commercial vacancy rates, while tourism and hotel occupancy showed seasonal strength; staff flagged an estimated 15—16% overnight "leakage" and committed to more targeted efforts to capture visitor room nights.
Kayn Garcia, the city's data analyst, told the Economic Development Subcommittee that Ventura's baseline indicators are generally healthy: the city has about 111,000 residents, roughly 42,300 households and a reported median household income of $102,900. "Our business landscape continues to demonstrate steady growth," Garcia said, reporting 6,174 commercial business licenses and describing more than 600 distinct NAICS categories in the register.
The presentation grouped results across five areas: business licenses, vacancy rates, workforce, tourism and lodging. Garcia said commercial businesses rose about 7% year over year and noted a 25% increase in certain out-of-city licensed businesses. Council members cautioned that multiple licenses per operator can inflate counts; staff agreed to export the license list as a de-duplicated CSV for verification.
On office and industrial real estate, staff cited CoStar data showing office vacancy in a roughly 6.3—7.3% band in 2025 and industrial vacancy between 2.5—3.5%. "We're doing well on vacancy compared with county and state averages," Garcia said, but also warned of limited modern industrial inventory within city limits, which could constrain industrial-sector growth.
Workforce indicators showed a labor force of about 57,720 with 55,344 employed (a participation rate staff estimated at ~96%). Garcia highlighted that healthcare and social assistance led job growth in 2025 with an estimated gain of more than 1,400 jobs countywide and cited county projections expecting roughly 13% sector growth by 2029.
Turning to tourism, staff used Placer AI to report about 1.24 million regional trips (50+ miles) in 2025, 1.56 million visitor-nights and an estimated $119.3 million in visitor spending. Garcia identified dining as the top activity, accounting for about 32.1% of visitor spending (roughly $38 million by staff's calculation). Long-distance visitors (150+ miles) generated roughly $62 million in spending and averaged multi-night stays.
Hotel indicators from STR showed expected seasonal occupancy swings and a summer peak near 79%. Staff flagged an estimated overnight "leakage" of about 16.2% for regional visitors (roughly 252,400 room nights) and 15.7% for long-distance visitors (about 131,200 room nights), and urged expanding higher-quality room inventory to capture those lost nights.
Members requested additional breakdowns, including how many local jobs are filled by city residents and more granular visitor-journey data; staff said some of those figures are available in prior staff reports and that future quarterly updates will include further detail. The subcommittee closed the item by asking staff to provide a de-duplicated business-license CSV and to consider packaging the data for full council review.
