ICYMI: Miami Herald: South Florida tourism leaders worry cut to Visit Florida will crush hospitality industry

South Florida tourism leaders worry cut to Visit Florida will crush hospitality industry
Miami Herald
Chabeli Herrera
February 28, 2017
There’s only so much South Florida can take in a year, hoteliers say.
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Hurricane Matthew battered the coast. And then came Zika, the blow that almost knocked the tourism industry out.
But it didn’t, thanks in part to a major marketing campaign that reminded travelers that South Florida — and particularly Wynwood and Miami Beach — were still open for business.
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The agency that helped bring South Florida back from Zika, hurricanes and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and that touts the state’s tourism virtues around the globe, faces a budget whack of epic proportions.
Last week, the Florida House Appropriations Committee voted to shrink Visit Florida’s budget to a third of its size, from $78 million to $25 million.
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But Jared Galbut, managing principal and co-founder of Menin Hospitality, which operates various restaurants and hotels in Miami Beach, is among those who find the decision to cut Visit Florida baffling, particularly as Miami-Dade rebounds from the worst of the Zika crisis.
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Tourism is one of Florida’s leading industries, responsible for a record 112.8 million visitors in 2016. Last year marked the sixth consecutive year of record visitation to the state.
In 2015, the most recent year for which data is available, visitors spent $108.8 billion in Florida on taxable goods, of which $11.3 billion was returned to the state in tax collections. In other words, said Dr. Jerry Parrish, Chief Economist and Director of Research for the Florida Chamber Foundation in a 2016 release, “those are taxes Florida’s businesses and families don’t have pay because our visitors have paid them for us.”
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In South Florida, the tourism industry is also a job creator, responsible for nearly 142,000 jobs in Miami-Dade and more than 95,000 jobs in Broward this year.
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SOUTH FLORIDA IMPACT
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Said Stacy Ritter, president of the Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau. “[Visit Florida has] a much longer reach than we do because they just have a much bigger budget. They can tell us who we need to talk to, point to the right people, as well as put our message out locally.”
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For smaller businesses, Visit Florida’s impact is event greater, said Peggy Benua, general manager of the 108-room Dream South Beach
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THE NEXT COLORADO
In downtown Miami, InterContinental general manager Robert Hill is bracing for a Colorado-like blow.
In 1993, Colorado became the only state to eliminate its tourism marketing organization, obliterating that agency’s $12 million budget. Within two years, Colorado’s share of domestic travelers dropped 30 percent, resulting in $1.4 billion of lost tourism revenue annually, according to a 2009 report by Longwoods Travel USA. Over time, revenue loss increased to more than $2 billion a year and Colorado plunged from first in visitorship to 17th.
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For their part, local tourism advocates are hoping the state won’t quit Visit Florida while Florida’s tourism is ahead.
“We know restaurants and hotels, it’s a luxury. People cut them out as soon as times get tough,” said Henry Delgado, general manager at South Beach steakhouse Smith and Wollensky.
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“We are going to just take second place and second place is never as good as first.”