Tourism in Florida has suffered due to COVID-19, last year tourism tax collection rates went down about 25%. That loss of tourism means the loss of billions of dollars and it forced many businesses to downsize or shut down. USF economics professor Christopher Jones notes the importance of the tourism tax.
“They contribute quite a bit because they help provide infrastructure and other local services that support the area to accommodate that increase in population… that comes in as a result of tourism.” Jones said.
Before COVID-19 the average amount of visitors coming to Hillsborough County was going up every year. President and CEO of Visit Tampa Bay Santiago Corrada says his marketing company was reporting record high numbers in visitors in early 2020.
“Well up to the pandemic we were growing exponentially, we were seeing great growth in hotel revenue, hotel occupancy really selling just about everything we had. Then you know COVID-19 hit and we saw that occupancy number drop from 80% to 50% for March, April it dropped all the way down to 23.3%.” Corrada said.
