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Volusia County’s Powerful Economic Engine, Tourism is Fueled by Bed Taxes -
Your Chamber Team Helps Keep the Fuel Flowing
By Lori Campbell Baker, Executive Director, Daytona Beach Area Convention & Visitors Bureau
You know who loves Volusia County (almost) as much as you do? Our 4.4 million annual visitors. Once people visit, they’re likely to return and tell their friends and family to do the same. Some even move their businesses to our area. The positive impact of these visitors bring includes prosperity and improved quality of life to our local citizens. The local hospitality industry supports nearly 40,000 jobs and pumps $3.3 billion of direct spending into our favorite local businesses.
How does the Daytona Beach Area Convention and Visitors Bureau attract visitors to our community and meetings/sports groups to our convention center? We do it using the dollars that our visitors leave behind. Along with sales taxes, each of our overnight visitors pays into two local “bed taxes.” These bed taxes are charged as a percentage of their daily room rate, and they’re paid in hotels/motels, campgrounds, RV parks, condos, and hosted vacation rentals like AirBnb, VRBO, etc. The two bed taxes are oddly named, but they both work hard on your behalf: A 3% Tourist Development Tax is levied countywide on overnight stays, and these funds are currently paying down the bonds on the Ocean Center convention center complex. An additional 3% Convention Development Tax, created by the State and enacted in the County in 1984 at the request of hoteliers who were seeking a dedicated source for tourism marketing funding, is levied separately in the three tourism taxing districts (Halifax Area, Southeast Volusia and West Volusia.) The Convention Development Tax is used to market our three unique destinations to potential guests who live outside the area, in order to generate even more overnight stays. In short, the Tourist Development Tax funds our convention center, and the Convention Development Tax funds our tourism marketing. Each of these tax streams have very specific legal uses, and the result is a business model that works for us all.
Fiscal year 2024/25 was the Daytona Beach Area Convention and Visitors Bureau’s second highest revenue in history. That said, our budget of approximately $15 million (which is based on future bed tax collection estimates and includes more than $2.5 million from fund balance) is a small fraction of what some of our Florida neighbors and nationwide competitors have to spend. That’s where the power of lobbying organizations, including the Daytona Regional Chamber, comes in. Through its Cornerstone committee, local and state connections, and lobbying power, the Chamber is working to protect current allowable bed tax usage so that smaller communities like ours can continue to thrive. Without the money that our visitors’ bed taxes bring in, our community would have to find nearly $35 million in alternate funding in order to market the area and pay down our bonds. Your Chamber membership is important on many levels. We see it as a commitment to tourism, and we thank you!
NOTE: The Halifax Area Advertising Authority, an 11-member Board appointed by County Council, does business as the Daytona Beach Area Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB). The CVB has 17 staff members highly trained in the areas of marketing, sales, communications and finance.
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