Published on : Friday, April 26, 2019
“It’s definitely been a little high stressed,” said Kami Kreaps, a manager at the center which provides various water based activities for the visitors.
She explains recent news that there’s a possibility that Legislature might shut down Visit Florida, the tourism marketing agency of the state has made local businesses quite anxious.
“If we decline in business, then our staff declines which ultimately means that we have to lay staff off if that happens,” Kreaps said.
As per Visit Florida, when their funding grew to $76 million last year, the state experienced a record-breaking 126.1 million visitors. Glenn Jergensen Executive Director of the Palm Beach County Tourism Council says their marketing initiations have a major impact on our area.
“This is all about jobs, this is your neighbors, my neighbor’s people that work in this industry not only in the tourism industry but in the construction industry,” Jergensen said.
In 2018, Jergensen says that the county saw record-breaking tourism numbers as well. He says the growth in visitors leads to new hotels and tourist attractions.
“We have over 2,000 rooms right now being built in Palm Beach County,” he said. “New hotels that are going in play. We’ve built stadiums in Palm Beach County with tourism development taxes. We wouldn’t of been doing that and creating those construction jobs without tourists.”
For the state agency, the funding will expire on Oct. 1st. Earlier in the legislative session, senators passed a bill that extended that date and put $50 million in its budget.
Nevertheless, House leaders have so far disregarded that bill and many are cynical about using tax dollars to help tourism. However in Martin County tourism leaders say they need Visit Florida’s help.
“Is it a hurricane, is it blue-green algae, is it red tide? There’s all these negative perceptions out there. You really need the funding available to change market perception,” Nerissa Okie, Tourism and Marketing, Martin County said.