Tourism industry tops $600M hotel revenue goal

TAMPA — Tampa Bay's tourism industry has achieved a long-sought goal, generating more than $600 million in hotel revenue in a calendar year.

“This is a tremendous achievement by the Visit Tampa Bay team and our 800-plus partners,” states Santiago Corrada, president and CEO of Visit Tampa Bay, in a press release. “Back in 2014, we set a goal for our destination of reaching $30 million in bed-tax collections over three years.”

As of Dec. 31, 2017, visitors to Tampa and Hillsborough County generated more than $644 million in taxable hotel revenue and produced a record-setting $32 million in bed taxes.

“Working together as an industry, we built Tampa Bay into a tourism powerhouse that supports nearly 50,000 local jobs,” Corrado states in the release, adding that the region crossed the $30 million threshold after years of strong and steady growth that dramatically outpaced the state and nation.

Visit Tampa Bay is a nonprofit destination marketing agency that promotes tourism in the Tampa Bay region. In the release, it says its efforts have helped push local hotel room rates up nearly 22%, versus 11.2% for Florida and 10.3% for the country as a whole.