Hotel revenue shows continued strength of tourism rebound

TAMPA—Tourism continues to boom in the Tampa Bay region, with taxable revenue at Tampa hotels topping $60 million in June.

According to a statement from Visit Tampa Bay, the tourism organization marketing the city to visitors, total taxable hotel revenue jumped 10.74% over 2019 to $64 million.

This helped tourist development tax collections for June to increase by $950,181 over 2019. The 32.92% growth was due in part to the tourism development tax going from 5% to 6% last year.

Visit Tampa Bay’s share of the collections came in at $3.8 million.  The organization gets 41% of the tourism development tax that’s collected.

For the first nine months of the fiscal year, though, collections are down 0.75% to $25.5 million when compared to the same period the previous fiscal year.

In the statement, Santiago C. Corrada, president and CEO of Visit Tampa Bay calls the results for June a “tremendous accomplishment.”

“This is becoming much more than just recovery for us,” he says. 

Visit Tampa Bay expects the momentum to continue into July. Early numbers the group provided bears out the optimism.

The occupancy rate for Saturday June 3 was 88.6% and that two events in the city — the Elks national convention and the United Bikerz Jamboree — brought about 18,000 visitors.