Measure TT Would Let Santa Monica Tax Corporate Olympic Hotel Blocks

Companies now get the 15% bed tax back after 30 days, and the council could cut their rate to zero.

Thirty-one nights. That's how long a company has to hold a Santa Monica hotel room to get back the city's entire 15% bed tax. City finance staff say they've been getting more questions about doing exactly that during the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Measure TT, on Santa Monica's Nov. 3 ballot, is the city's answer, the Santa Monica Daily Press reported Monday. It doesn't raise the rate. It lets the City Council declare "Major Event Periods," and during one, rooms paid for by a corporation or other legal entity wouldn't get the refund, however long the stay.

The same measure also lets the council set the hotel rate on those corporate stays anywhere from 15% down to 0% while the event period lasts. The bottom of that range is what those long bookings pay now.

The staff report that sent TT to the ballot, at a July 28 special council meeting, is blunt about today's rule. As the ordinance reads, a corporate block that runs past 30 days owes no hotel tax at all. Staff wrote that the refund hadn't mattered much financially before, but that the sheer scale of Olympic activity planned in Santa Monica could change that.

Santa Monica took in $68.7 million in hotel tax in the fiscal year that ended June 30, up 8.5%, the Santa Monica Daily Press reported from the city's one-year budget review. What TT would add to that isn't in the record. The staff report lists no immediate financial impact, and the Daily Press noted in its Measure TT explainer that there's no estimate of how many corporate bookings, or how many declared events, would qualify.

The zero-to-15 dial is there because of hotels. Hoteliers warned before the council vote that ending the refund could leave Santa Monica at a disadvantage against nearby cities, the Daily Press reported. Beverly Hills, Marina del Rey, Long Beach and Huntington Beach refund the tax the way Santa Monica does now, and the staff report adds Newport Beach and Santa Barbara to that list.

Staff don't expect the dial to cost much. Any temporary rate cut could shrink what the city collects per stay, the report says, but staff expect higher room rates, more visitors and more spending around town to make up for it.

The Olympics aren't the only draw on staff's mind. The report frames the change around a run of big events, naming the 2026 Ocean Way Festival and the 2027 Super Bowl alongside the Games, and says the council would get the same flexibility for future events like them.

Someone booking a room for themselves sees no change, and the 17% home-share rate can't be lowered. The measure does add one rule for every long stay. A refund goes only where the same person occupies the room for 31 straight days, so a company can't rotate guests through one room to reach the mark.

Hotels told the city during outreach that they sometimes house guests for a month or more after a displacement or during medical treatment. TT lets the finance director write exemptions for that kind of hardship.

No one filed a ballot argument against TT. The argument in favor says the measure "does not create a new hotel tax," the Daily Press reported. It isn't related to the City of Los Angeles' Proposition TT, a separate hotel-tax measure from June 2.

If TT passes, what the Olympics bring in still hangs on a rate the council can only set once it declares an event period. Voters pick the range on Nov. 3. The council picks the number.

Source: smdp.com, retrieved October 20, 2026. Other sources: santamonica.gov, smdp.com (2), santamonicacityca.iqm2.com.