OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) - Oakland tourism officials are spending $195,000 to try to shed the city’s reputation for crime and blight to attract more visitors.
The money will pay for ads that are intended to rebrand the city as a culturally diverse destination with a burgeoning arts, fine dining and technology startup scene.
Visit Oakland, the city’s tourism bureau, spent a year researching how to change Oakland’s image. It recently unveiled a new colorful logo that includes a backdrop of the new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
The bureau says about 2.5 million people visited Oakland last year. They spent roughly $1.3 billion.
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