Legislature Targets Tourism Development Again

The 2025 Florida Legislative Session has been unusual in many ways with failure to reach a budget agreement necessitating an extension to June 6 and disagreements between the governor and legislators. But there is one familiar touchstone in Tallahassee: attacks on tourism development efforts.

State officials are pushing an idea to use tourist development tax revenues to provide property tax relief to residents, effectively gutting the ability of local tourist development councils to use the money collected from overnight stays at hotels, motels, campgrounds and short-term rental properties to promote their destinations.

This is not the first time tourism development has been a target of state legislators. It is almost an annual rite, like the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano or the emergence of love bugs, for some elected representative of the people to propose cuts to the state’s tourism development arm Visit Florida. But this year, officials are going for the whole enchilada.

But the idea to divert 75% of bed tax collections to ease the property tax burden of Florida homeowners is bad policy masquerading as a public benefit. With Floridians facing skyrocketing homeowners’ insurance rates and still stubbornly high inflation, providing some financial relief in the form of reduced property taxes has the potential to be wildly popular. But it also has the potential to cripple the state’s largest industry.

According to a 2022 economic impact report on, tourism is responsible directly and indirectly for 2.1 million jobs or nearly 10% of all jobs in the Sunshine State. Visitors may spend a lot of time at amusement parks and the beach on their Florida vacations but they also shop in local stores, eat at local restaurants and spend money in a wide variety of ways.

Taking the money generated by the tourist development tax sounds like an easy fix to a problem but the result would likely be an economic disaster. The funds are used not only to promote destinations in a highly competitive tourism market, but also to maintain and expand tourism infrastructure such as athletic fields for sports tourism, beaches and many of the other amenities across the state that helped bring in a record 142.9 million visitors last year.

Now there are some who believe Florida’s reputation as a tourist destination is so deeply ingrained that there is little need to spend money marketing the state to attract visitors. But this a case where the old adage “you have to spend money to make money” applies. Florida isn’t the only place with amusement parks, beaches and places to explore.

Cutting the funding for local tourism development efforts would also hurt local organizations seeking help promoting their events which attract visitors as well. And any tax relief residents might feel is likely to be more than offset by the decline in sales tax revenue and the negative impact on jobs tied to the tourism industry.

Providing some financial relief to Florida residents is never a bad idea. But robbing Peter to pay Paul in order to do it is.