Analysis: Twentynine Palms Tourism Business Improvement District 's 2025-2026 Tourism Marketing Plan and Budget
The ambitious proposed plan and $547,843 budget focuses on events, advertising, and enhancing the Twentynine Palms brand, but with little insight into what's effective.
How can Twentynine Palms position itself as a premium travel destination?
Increasing awareness and interest in tourism to the City is the mission of the Twentynine Palms Tourism Business Improvement District (TBID). As the TBID looks ahead to their next fiscal and operating year, Marketing Director Breanne Dusastre along with members of the TBID Board prepared the draft Marketing Plan and Budget for 2025-2026. The TBID board approved the proposed plan and budget at their August 14th meeting and as a final step in the process, it will be presented to the Twentynine Palms City Council at their meeting on September 9, 2025.1
This yearly report and plan is prepared as a part of the City Council reauthorization of the TBID, which operates on a October 1 - September 30 fiscal year. The TBID is an entity funded by a 1.5% pass-through tax paid by guests at overnight accommodations.
Marketing Goals
The 2025-2026 plan aims to build on the work done to promote Twentynine Palms as a tourist destination in years past and is focused around the City’s destination pillars: Outdoor Recreation; Arts, Culture and History; Health and Wellness; Culinary Experiences; and Stargazing & Astronomy. It aims to provide greater context for the TBID’s proposed initiatives and outline why these strategies can help achieve the TBID’s objectives of “sharpening the city’s destination identity, expanding year-round tourism offerings, and leveraging its unique assets to attract more overnight visitors.”
The document lays out the TBID’s marketing goals for Twentynine Palms and strategies for achieving them, including for branding and positioning the City, development of signature events, and ongoing marketing initiatives including digital marketing, press outreach, advertising, and social media. These goals include:
Enhance brand awareness of Twentynine Palms.
Increase visitor engagement through compelling content, events, and experiences.
Strengthen and leverage local, regional, and state partners
Pursue TBID conversion from the 1989 Law to the 1994 Property and Business Improvement District Law to enable a five-year term.
In depth analysis of successes and challenges lacking
As a marketer, events producer, and community manager by trade who has spent over two decades working in established companies, fast growing start ups, and nonprofits, overall I found that the plan lacks both an in-depth analysis of the TBID’s successes and challenges in the past year and a strategy for how the Board plans to respond to these in the upcoming year. Despite the many strides Twentynine Palms has made to promote itself, including major “out of home” billboard campaigns along the I-10 and in Los Angeles, as well as earning media mentions in major publications such as Vogue and the Los Angeles Times, the plan seems mostly copied from the 2024-2025 Marketing Plan with slight updates.
While the 2025 - 2026 marketing plan shows breadth, due to the lack of data presented, few examples included, and lack of a consistent strategy to measure success, the overall depth and potential effectiveness of the plan is unclear. Given their ambitions and the relatively small size of the TBID staff and budget compared to their ambitions, this marketing plan may also be overly optimistic, with efforts spread too thin to have an impact.
Analysis needs to do more to mitigate threats and seize opportunities
The 2025 - 2026 Marketing Plan opens with an overview of Twentynine Palms as a tourist destination, as well as an analysis of the City’s Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) when it comes to tourism. A SWOT can help ensure a strategic approach to marketing and ensure that a plan capitalizes on existing strengths and pursues relevant opportunities, while mitigating weaknesses and threats. Major points in the analysis include:
Opportunities due to proximity to Joshua Tree National Park, diverse lodging options, a revitalized downtown, and the year round support of the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center.
Weakness due to the lack of a clearly defined destination identity and being overshadowed by the “Joshua Tree brand.”
Opportunities to capitalize on the City as a growing arts destination, stargazing opportunities, the new freedom plaza, and proximity to the park.
Threats from economic uncertainty, competition from other high desert communities, vulnerability due to the thread of government shutdowns, and climate change.
Despite including the addition of new lodging, the analysis seems mostly a repeat from last year. While it’s true that the major factors impacting tourism in Twentynine Palms have not shifted, the analysis does not include any activities the TBID undertook in the past year that may have helped strengthen opportunities or respond to threats. For example, has the addition of the new hotels RESET and Wren, as well as features in publications such as Vogue and the Los Angeles Times, helped with perception of the City as a premiere lodging destination? It seems like a glaring omission that the growing awareness of, and energy around, Twentynine Palms isn’t seen as a greater opportunity.
The analysis rightly identifies “Economic uncertainty, inflation, and fluctuating travel costs impacting consumer decisions” as an important threat. It also highlights the decline in international visitors to California, which dropped 9.2% in 2025, citing the Visit California Visitation and Spend Forecast from May 2025. The same report also forecast a slowdown in visitor growth to 0.5%, highlighting that gains from domestic visitors could offset international losses.
To mitigate this threat the TBID plan suggests an increased focus on regional travelers. However, they do not analyze how local travel and spending trends might also be changing due to a stagnant economy and slow hiring environment. Although still low by historical standards, the unemployment rate for August of 2025 was 4.3%, the highest level since October of 2021. Can domestic travel truly make up for a lack of international visitors, especially with high unemployment and domestic economic and political uncertainty? What does early data from park visitorship, hotel and short term rental occupancy, and spending at local businesses tell the City? The analysis could be strengthened by looking to more local and specific sources of data in order to better inform a realistic response to this year's specific economic conditions.
An aspirational, but disconnected brand narrative
A “brand narrative” can help an organization define the story that they want to tell through their marketing efforts. It’s a way of capturing a larger vision and ensuring that different market tactics utilized all connect to a coherent whole. The TBID’s 2025-2026 Marketing Plan highlights an aspirational “brand identity” for Twentynine Palms, which they describe as:
Twentynine Palms is the vibrant heart of the Morongo Basin, where the spirit of adventure, creativity, and timeless beauty come together. It is a place of infinite possibilities, rich history, and boundless open spaces, redefining itself as a premier destination for art, exploration, business, and tourism.
This identity is identical to last year, which isn’t surprising, because a brand should stay consistent over time. However, the plan lacks details on how the TBID’s marketing efforts have helped to bring this brand to life, whether through events, advertising, or media coverage.
The plan identifies four core audience groups for the TBID’s marketing efforts for Twentynine Palms:
Thrill Seekers / Flashpackers / Outdoor Enthusiasts
National Park Lovers / RVers / Eco-Adventurers / International Visitors
Creative Retreat Seekers / Artists / Writers / Photographers / Wellness Travelers
Seasonal Sun Seekers / Multigenerational Travelers
The plan aims to engage these audiences with:
Regional road trip itineraries and family-friendly lodging promotions.
Seasonal multi-night packages with local business partners.
Digital ads in cold-weather regional markets highlighting mild winters and outdoor activities.
Marketing seasonal events and group-friendly activities.
The core audience groups are the same as last year, which again, is unsurprising because like a brand, as a marketer it’s important to reach out to and engage specific audiences consistently. What’s missing is a sense of year-over-year impact. How is the TBID capturing if their activities are resonating with and successfully attracting these audiences to the City? The plan does not share what the TBID has learned from their work over the past few years, and whether their brand identity is resonating with the audiences they most want to reach. It is unclear how TBID activities are impacting the decisions they are making for the next year about positioning Twentynine Palms as a premiere tourist destination. The plan doesn’t expand upon who will be taking the initiative on the above tactics, or if they will be folded into other goals.
Events are a focus, but what kind?
Events, events grants, and measuring the impact of events have been an ongoing focus at TBID meetings, both for the Board and during public comment. The plan states that,
Visit 29 Palms will remain committed to supporting its newly established Sponsorship and Event Grant Program in FY24-25, a program designed to foster the development of new and innovative events, increase industry collaboration, and attract overnight visitors.
The plan notes that TBID funding aims to help “seed” new events that appeal to their identified target audiences and attract new visitors. The plan does not report back on the impact of events from the 2024-2025 season. It says nothing about metrics or goals for events, which events were the most successful in terms of attracting visitorship in the past, or even give examples of the kind of events that were hosted and how they helped enhance the brand narrative and attract members of the City’s target audiences.
The TBID allocates $150,000 in the 2025-2026 budget for event grants and sponsorships, which is $50,000 less than last year. While there are slight increases in funding for digital advertising and $20,000 for “special projects"2, the plan does not discuss this change. Overall, the events section as a whole is short and vague despite the budget for event grants and sponsorships being a significant portion of the TBID budget.
While the plan lists the types of events they prioritize, such as outdoor recreation events; arts, culture, and history events; health and wellness events; and family-friendly events – and mentions that funding from the City should serve as a “catalyst” for events that become self-sustaining, the plan is unclear about how they could support the growth of these events, how many visitors they expect them to attract, and how the “longer stay” that events are supposed to encourage is defined.
Marketing goals, activities, and key performance indicators need to be tied together
The 2025-2025 plan presents a comprehensive digital and print marketing strategy that would be expected of any modern organization. These tactics, which make up another significant portion of the TBID’s budget and allocation include:
$69,440 for broadcast and out-of-home advertising, such as billboards.
$48,000 for contract services, with $24,000 going to social media support and $24,000 going to Civitas Advisors to support the conversion of the TBID from a 1-year authorization to a 5-year.
$40,570 for digital marketing such as email, social media, and sponsored ads and search results.
$15,000 for print advertising, which is broken into two line items: $3,000 for a panel at the California Welcome Center and $12,000 for a feature in Palm Springs Life’s annual desert living guide.
Overall, these tactics are expensive and the effectiveness of many of them, outside of digital advertising, is difficult to measure. For example, $22,500 is budgeted for advertising in the Palm Springs Airport, while $35,000 is allocated for billboards. Many of these tactics are the same that TBID has leveraged previously. Their plan does not provide context as to why they decided to pursue them for another year. Do they have a sense that these methods are more effective in promoting the brand of Twentynine Palms and more overnight stays than, for example, more local events or paying for more content created by influencers? Are these the places to advertise that connect with their target audiences? What impact have they seen?
Overall, while the plan promises there will be tracking and goals, it does not define what success looks like or provide benchmarks based on the efforts of years past. While the plan alludes to benchmarks, it would be more effective to include these so that “success” is well defined before the TBID’s funding is approved. In marketing circles we refer to certain metrics, such as social media clicks or followers, as vanity metrics. While they are important, the TBID should focus on lodging referrals, visitorship, and more qualitative measurements, such as visitor surveys, to understand what is working to bring people to Twentynine Palms.
Conversion process mostly left out of the plan
One of the TBID’s four goals for 2025-2026 is to “Pursue TBID conversion from the 1989 Law to the 1994 Property and Business Improvement District Law to enable a five-year term.” They state that this will enable them to increase operational efficiency and support long term strategic planning. In a meeting on June 18, 2025 the TBID voted to pause conversion from the 1989 law to the 1994 law this year, but work towards conversion in the next term. In that meeting Dusastre supported the pause saying, “[I] suggest that we use this next year to really thoughtfully do the planning and the work needed to be able to set ourselves up for success.”
While the 2025-2026 plan includes $24,000 for Civitas Advisors to help with conversion, there’s no detail of what the TBID will do differently this year to show they are ready for longer term planning or support. With so many other tactics in play, will conversion be pushed down the road once again due to staff time and resources? What does “setting themselves up for success” look like? This draft was a chance to define that, but details are lacking.
Where is the voice of the visitor?
While overall the proposed 2025-2026 Marketing Plan and Budget is fairly consistent with last years, a major presence seems to be missing: that of actual visitors. There is no section, nor budget, dedicated to surveying visitors, or measuring and analyzing the results of marketing activities. Even if the TBID has the time and resources to pursue the breadth of these activities, how will they know whether their marketing is having an impact? Some options could be simple: survey overnight visitors at hotels, vacation rentals, and other overnight accommodations through a paper survey or scannable QR code in their rooms or follow up email with a link to an electronic survey. While this data may be limited, it could give a sense of who is visiting and why. The TBID could also choose a sample of events to attend and talk with attendees for a qualitative analysis.
Overall, with this plan, it feels like the TBID is operating in a bit of a vacuum, disconnected from the lively and passionate culture of visitors, business owners, and residents of Twentynine Palms that they aim to promote.
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This analysis is based on the 2025-2026 TBID Marketing and Budget Report approved by the TBID Board at the August 14, 2025 meeting. The author has not reviewed the report submitted with the September 9 City Council agenda for potential additions or changes not reviewed by the TBID Board. Also Included in the September 9 Council agenda is a 2024-2025 Annual Report that was not discussed or reviewed in public by the TBID Board and therefore was not available for review for this article. (Footnote added after publication on 9/6/2025)
We understand this is a set-aside to match the Levitt Foundation Music Series Grant for concerts at Freedom Plaza should it be successful.
I travelled to West Yellowstone where they have a TBID and a TOT lodging tax. Small town but they see over 400K visitors monthly in the summer. There, all hotels and lodges that also operate restaurants on-site have to charge restaurant patrons the 4% lodging tax on their meals. The TOT theoretically applies to all hotel and lodge “guests”, not just those staying overnight. I wonder if the Oasis Inn and 29 Palms Inn have been doing this for their restaurant customers or is this something our TBID should be enforcing?
Speaking of SWOT, did our marketing director see that the recent Minneapolis school shooter had the name of the 29 Palms bomber written on his AR-style rifle? This is what people think of when they hear “29 Palms.”
Utah trail, the town’s main artery to the National Park, still hasn’t seen a street sweeper since last Monday’s storm. Tourists are driving that road now and making comments. Our City has a major PR issue and this money is going up in smoke.
I found this very interesting. I think Twentynine Palms has a lot of potential as a tourist destination but..........
Firstly, a lot of people visit Joshua Tree National Park. What is there for them to do in the evenings. Nothing. There is zero entertainment. That is a whole other story on it's own.
Secondly, I say this as a vegan myself. People who visit the park are probly going to be people with a healthier lifestyle. Most groups of people include a vegan or two. The vegan options at restaurants are not great. Having an Impossible burger on the menu is not a vegan option if you don't have vegan cheese and mayo.
Thirdly, advertising. If events are organized we never get to hear about them. Whoever organizes events in Twentynine Palms is failing miserably at advertising them to the residents so it must be even worse for visitors.. And we can only have so many art shows.
Next. We need a live music venue. Right now everyone goes to Pappy & Harrietts.
Another. Twentynine Palms needs to be more business friendly. I have watched a friend struggle with the city to get a small business started. It is ridiculous. We need more small businesses to support tourists which will bring ore tourists in.
Yes, there is more. I got the information about what is required to organize an event in Twentynine Palms. It is way over the top. It is harder to run an event in Twentynine palms than in Vegas. This needs to be simplified.
Finally, Twentynine Palms needs to decide as a city whether it wants to grow, shrink or stay the same. What we have now seems to be failing. Businesses closing with loads of empty business presmises along Highway 62 falling into disrepair. This is what visitors see when they first come into Twentynine Palms. First impressions last a long time.