Visit Central Florida worried about losing tourist funding amid new House bill

POLK COUNTY, Fla — The future of tourism in Florida was under scrutiny today after the state House passed a bill that would reallocate funds from the tourism industry to the housing market in the form of tax refunds.

“From an economics standpoint, I’m an old economics professor, this is a bad move, this is a bad business move for the state of Florida,” said Mark Jackson, Director of Visit Central Florida. “In Polk County that’s going to amount to about $58 a year, minuscule when you are destroying the number one industry in Polk County, the number one industry in the state of Florida.”

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According to Visit Central Florida, Polk County hosts over 300 events annually, many of which take place at the Lake Myrtle Sports Complex. However, Visit Central Florida says if this new bill goes into effect, many of these events could disappear, leaving beautiful fields just sitting empty.

 However, homeowners, like Austin Chamberlain, say times are tough, and any relief is appreciated.

“I think it is a 100 percent very good idea, we already have enough tourism coming over here, we don’t particularly need any help telling people to come back to Florida and as a homeowner even getting $58 bucks a year, whatever it might be, any bit helps for the homeowners,” said Chamberlain.

Fellow homeowner Stanley Ruff agrees it’s nice to get money back, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea.

“Any relief is relief for homeowners, but Florida is about tourism, tourism dollars bring in a lot of revenue for the state of Florida, so it’s kind of difficult to take a hard stance one way or the other because I know the significance of both,” said Ruff.

Currently, Visit Central Florida receives 5% from Polk County's hotel rooms and vacation rentals. Last year, that added up to $24 million, which was used to promote everything from sports to arts and culture, to amusement parks.

“Take Legoland, we recruited Legoland Resort into the old Cypress Gardens using marketing dollars, they bring in roughly two million visitors a year,” said Jackson.

Visit Central Florida says that without this revenue stream, they will inevitably lose events and visitors to neighboring states.

“When they strip our ability to market our destination locally here, in Tampa, in St. Pete, in Orlando, wherever it may be, now we are at a competitive disadvantage, we lose money, when when you lose money, you lose jobs,” said Jackson.

The bill is now on to the state senate. Visit Central Florida says they won’t go down without a fight.

“We have a strategy in place, we have the troops rallied if you will, there is a lot of upset people, people fearful that they are going to lose their jobs, they are going to lose the economic engine that drives this state, that drives this economy,” said Jackson.