County's bed-tax collections set record despite 2 hurricanes
PALM COAST — Sandwiched between two massive hurricanes in less than a year, Flagler County's tourism development efforts still paid off with record bed-tax collections.
Total collections from motels, campgrounds and vacation rental properties topped $2.2 million for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, a 6 percent increase over the previous year and a new record for the county, according to Matt Dunn, executive director of the Flagler County Tourist Development Office.
And with collections in October and November up 38 percent compared to the same period in 2016, the new year is off to a strong start, he said.
Dunn said the fiscal 2016-17 total includes three months of bed-tax collections, which fund tourist development programs, at the 5 percent level after county commissioners in March raised the tax from 4 percent to help fund dune repairs following Hurricane Matthew.
(READ: Flagler OKs 1 percent bed-tax hike to help fund dune restoration efforts)
"If you were to back out those three months and recalculate, we would have been down 2 percent," Dunn said. "But in a fiscal year where we saw two hurricanes, we'll take it."
Dunn said tourism officials will track bed-tax collections quarterly and calculate it at the previous 4 percent rate for comparison, but the primary focus heading into 2018 is on shoring up the county's coastal dunes. As part of the bed tax increase, revenue for dune restoration efforts was increased to meet needs created by damage from Hurricane Matthew in October 2016.
"We recognize we are in uncharted territory," Dunn said.
Recovering from hurricane damage is also the focus for Barry Griffin, owner of the Whale Watch Motel on State Road A1A in Flagler Beach. Griffin said Hurricane Irma stripped the shingles off the roof of one of the buildings in the 10-room motel complex after Hurricane Matthew destroyed the roof of one of the two-unit buildings on the property.
"It's been rough," he said Thursday.
Griffin said instead of replacing the roof on the building to match the pitched roofs on the other units, he decided to build an observation deck instead.
"We're going to make lemonade out of lemons," he said.
The optimism reflected in the decision to expand the motel's amenities comes from Griffin's anticipation of growth in the coming year.
"We expect a really good tourism year," he said. "We're always full between Memorial Day and Labor Day."
Dunn said the outlook for the coming year is positive, with the local tourism office introducing its own events to bring visitors to the area.
"We have entered into a phase where we're creating our own events," he said. "I think group business sales have gone very well in preparation for this fiscal year."
Dunn said another focus in the new year will be on enhancing Flagler County as a tourist destination.
"During 2018, we're going to take a very hard look at facilities using our capital projects fund to enhance and even potentially build new facilities," he said. "We're very limited when it comes to tourism-based assets and have had a lot of conversations with the county administration on expanding our assets so we can use them in the future."