Florida is creating jobs and in recent years has seen both record-breaking budget surplus and record-breaking growth.
But today, legislators are trying to take away a critical investment in our state by completely defunding Visit Florida, the state’s destination marketing organization.
House Bill 7053 is not only a direct attack on one of our state’s strongest and most foundational industries, it’s also a brilliantly bad piece of legislation.
HB 7053 would effectively destroy tourism in our state and eliminate the local destination marketing organizations that help the many small and mid-size businesses that rely on visitors and on tourism investments. Jacksonville isn’t made up of world-renowned attractions and experiences— it’s made up of locally owned businesses that don’t have the budget to market themselves.
HB 7053 also strips away local control of generated Tourist Development Taxes by taking $75 million in those locally generated taxes away from counties to be spent in Tallahassee at the discretion of legislators.
And what’s worse, the bill would require a referendum vote every six years, ensuring that any local tourism promotion organization, arts and cultural organization, museum, zoo and sporting event would be in danger of losing their funding every six years.
Our state and our communities rely on tourism.
Every dollar Visit Florida spends marketing our state yields a return on investment of $3.27. There are 22 million overnight and day-trippers that visit the Jacksonville area during the year bringing a total economic impact of $3.8 billion. That’s an impact of $10.4 million every day.
Visitors like this are the reason Florida doesn’t have a state income tax.
On top of that, without visitations to our state, Florida residents would have to pay an additional $1,500 annually in taxes. In addition to that, each household in Jacksonville would have to pay $700 more in county taxes.
Visitors have hundreds of choices in where they can go and we need Visit Florida and our local tourism promotion organizations to help remind them that Florida remains one of the best places to live, work and play.
Investing in our state’s tourism industry matters.
If our legislators want to usher in a new recession for the state, and want job losses in hotels, restaurants and attractions, then they should vote yes on HB 7053.
But if they want Florida to remain a beacon for visitors, and to continue to experience record-breaking economic health, job creation and tourism growth, I encourage them to vote no on HB 7053 and help us protect our state’s tourism-reliant economy.
Michael Corrigan is the President and CEO of Visit Jacksonville, a former Jacksonville City Council President and a former state constitutional Tax Collector for Duval County