The strong increase built on anemic growth of 1% in January 2011. While there was one fewer weekend day in January 2012, this was offset by the fact that one additional day of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival fell in January, rather than February (like last year), and likely contributed to the double-digit growth.
Interesting to note is that January’s actual growth came slightly higher at 12.1% but was lowered due to a refund of overpaid TOT from a prior period which lowered January’s overall growth to 11.8%.
Through January, $8.17 million in Transient Occupancy Taxes (TOT) have been collected with growth of 9.4% over the same period last fiscal year. We expect to end the year approximately $447,000 above the amended budget based on year-to-date collections through January and a revised growth assumption of 6% for the remaining months of the year.