Santa Monica has brought its California sunshine to the travel trade in Australia and New Zealand, wrapping up a four-city roadshow aimed squarely at luxury advisors, wholesalers, and travellers with an appetite for major sporting events served with an ocean view.
Santa Monica Travel & Tourism (SMTT) met more than 100 travel industry leaders and luxury advisors across Sydney, Brisbane, Auckland and Melbourne, using the roadshow to position the beachfront city as a stylish base for some of Southern California’s biggest events from 2027 onwards.
And there is certainly no shortage of headline attractions.
Super Bowl LXI will be staged at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on 14 February 2027, while Los Angeles will host the Olympic Games from 14–30 July 2028 and the Paralympic Games from 15–27 August 2028.
For Australian and New Zealand travellers ready to cross the Pacific for the action, SMTT’s message was simple: a sporting pilgrimage need not begin and end at the stadium turnstiles.
Instead, the destination wants visitors to combine premium event access with Santa Monica’s beaches, restaurants, shopping, hotels and famously relaxed Southern Californian atmosphere.
SMTT is strengthening that proposition through its relationship with On Location, the official hospitality provider for the NFL and the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Its packages can combine authorised event tickets with premium hospitality and other curated experiences.
In other words, this is not merely about finding a seat. It is about turning the seat into the centrepiece of a larger holiday.
Roadshow Meets NFL Fever
The Australasian visit came at an especially useful moment.
It followed the historic first NFL regular-season game played in Australia, when the San Francisco 49ers defeated the Los Angeles Rams 27–7 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on 11 September. The match attracted an official crowd of 100,021 and underlined just how substantial the appetite for American sport has become in this market.
SMTT representatives Rachel Lozano, Chief People Officer, and Aleksandr Sigalus, Director of Global Business Development, were joined by Kier Matthews, Head of Global Luxury Sales at On Location.
Together they conducted targeted sales calls with travel advisors and wholesalers, while a series of industry events put Santa Monica’s luxury credentials in front of influential partners.
The gatherings included VIP events at Café Sydney and Melbourne’s Stokehouse, while Brisbane hosted an exclusive breakfast with senior Flight Centre Travel Group executives.
For travel advisors, that face-to-face approach matters. Luxury travellers increasingly expect more than a hotel booking and a ticket confirmation. They want access, timing, restaurant recommendations, transport arrangements and the sort of local detail that separates a holiday from an itinerary assembled by spreadsheet.
Santa Monica is clearly betting that advisors will see value in packaging those elements together.
Coastline Meets Capital Investment
The destination also used the roadshow to showcase its eight neighbourhoods, roughly 5.5 kilometres of coastline and an accommodation sector that SMTT says has benefited from more than US$200 million in recent investment and upgrades.
That provides a useful commercial story for advisors selling California beyond the traditional Los Angeles stopover.
Santa Monica can offer the recognisable ingredients — Pacific sunsets, beach culture and the famous pier — while increasingly presenting itself as a higher-end base from which clients can access major events across greater Los Angeles.
The timing is difficult to ignore. Los Angeles is entering an extraordinary run of global sporting attention, beginning with Super Bowl LXI in 2027 and building towards LA28.
Misti Kerns, President and CEO of Santa Monica Travel & Tourism, said Australia and New Zealand remain strategically important markets.
“The enthusiasm and engagement we experienced throughout the roadshow was incredibly encouraging. Australia and New Zealand remain among our most valuable markets, particularly in the luxury travel space, where travellers seek authentic coastal experiences, exceptional dining, and personalised itineraries.
“With a remarkable lineup of major events approaching, our partnership with On Location allowed us to demonstrate how travellers can combine a stay in Santa Monica with access to some of the world’s most exciting sporting and entertainment events.”
For the travel trade, that combination may prove the real selling point.
A Super Bowl or Olympic ticket is already a powerful reason to travel. Add several nights beside the Pacific, quality dining, upgraded hotels and premium hospitality, and suddenly the journey becomes far more than a dash to Los Angeles for the final whistle.
Santa Monica, it seems, would very much prefer visitors to stay for the sunset.
For more information, visit: https://www.santamonica.com/.
By: Alison Jenkins – © 2026.
Read Time: 3 minutes.
Author Bio:
Alison Jenkins has lived most of her working life in the slipstream of aviation, where timetables matter, and people matter more. In airline sales, she built a reputation the old-fashioned way: by knowing her clients, her routes, and never missing the human detail.
Quick with a smile, quicker with a solution, she made deals with warmth and kept her edge intact.
Trade shows, FAM’s, airport lounges and hotel lobbies became her second address. And somewhere along the way, notebook in hand, she began writing the journeys rather than selling them. Her reports grew lively, observant, full of the small truths only travellers notice.
That was the moment it dawned on her: she wasn’t simply travelling. She belonged in its stories.
