Florida House considers bill that could cut state funding for 'Visit Florida'

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Some Florida house lawmakers want to cut state funding to "Visit Florida," the state's tourism and marketing agency. Instead, they want county-tourist development councils to contribute a portion of their tourism tax dollars, but some county leaders argue the bill disproportionately affects smaller counties.

The Florida Tourism Industry Marketing Corporation, as known as "Visit Florida" is a not-for-profit, private/public partnership. Each year, "Visit Florida" gets state funding which it's required to match dollar-for-dollar by recruiting tourism businesses, like Disney and Busch Gardens to invest in partnerships with the ultimate goal of driving tourism to the state.

Over the years, some lawmakers have questioned the effectiveness of "Visit Florida" and whether it's a good return on investment.

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For the 2022-2023 fiscal year, "Visit Florida" received $50 million in state funding, but if passed HB 7053 would cut that and instead take a percentage of tax revenue between two and five percent from Florida's 62 county tourist-development councils.

"We have to market to get people here. That's the money that we rely on to do that with," Citrus County Chamber of Commerce President & CEO Josh Wooten said.

As Wooten explained, the county heavily relies on tourism and has a marketing budget of about $3 million. Under the bill, Wooten estimates it would cost the county about $150,000 in tax revenue and force them to make cuts to their own marketing campaigns. 

"Every dollar is so much more important at the smaller county level. The more and more we can do to obviously target our niche of customer and tourism travelers, the better it is and the smaller your budget is, the more every dollar matters," said Michael Mancke, the general manager for Plantation on Crystal River, which is a full-service resort. 

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Crystal River is the only place in North America where you can legally swim with Manatees. Mancke worries the bill will mean the county will have to cut back on marketing efforts, which is the only way he says people know they exist.

Going forward, he hopes lawmakers rethink how to fund "Visit Florida." 

"It's a comfortable, quiet, original part of Florida that hopefully will last a little bit longer, and we need to be able to tell people about that," Mancke said.

The bill's sponsor State Rep. Mike Giallombardo of Cape Coral told the Orlando Sentinel that state funding allocated to Visit Florida may have had some impact on the growing tourism numbers but not as much as the news coverage about Florida being open post-pandemic. In 2022, Florida saw a 137 million visitors, which is five percent higher than the previous high in 2019.

As for the bill, it is still working its way through house committees.