Tourism, businesswomen, & revenue
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While Hurricane Ian impacted Florida’s top two industries (agriculture and tourism), plans are underway to make sure tourists know that the Sunshine State is open for visits. Meanwhile, state tax collections continued to top estimates going into the storm, and Florida is recognized as among the best states for women-owned businesses. It’s all in this week’s look at Florida economic news.
Ian’s Tourism Impacts: On a conference call I attended this week, Visit Florida CEO Dana Young made clear that her primary mission right now is helping tourism rebound as quickly as possible, following all of the devastating images of Hurricane Ian’s impacts televised around the country and world. Young said she and her team have been reaching out to destination marketing partners both in and out of impacted areas. Visit Florida is getting ready to launch a statewide tourism industry rebound campaign when the time is right, highlighting unaffected areas. They’ll then be ready to assist the impacted areas as recovery dictates. In the meantime, the tourism agency has paused its current advertising as well as delayed the launch of its annual “Adventure Seekers Campaign.” Florida visitors contributed $96.5 billion to Florida’s economy and supported over 1.6 million Florida jobs, based on the most recent 2019 study.
Revenue Fuels Recovery: The monthly state general revenue report for August is in and it shows another month of beating estimates. August general revenue came in $20.4 million higher than a mid-month revised estimate. In all, the state collected about $3.44 billion in net general revenue for the month. The higher than expected August collections were largely due to significant adjustments from the prior year from insurance taxes (up $28.8 million over estimate) and documentary stamp taxes (down $1.8 million over estimate). Sales tax collections were $22.4 million less than anticipated. The state’s Revenue Estimating Conference in mid-August also bumped up its projections for both this current 2022-2023 fiscal year and the 2023-2024 fiscal year by about $5.3 billion in total.
Women Businesses: According to the Orlando Business Journal, Florida is the best state in the U.S. for woman-owned small businesses and No. 2 when the District of Columbia is included. That’s according to a study from Australia-based software development firm Deputy. The study analyzed April 2022 data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy including the number of businesses owned by men and the number owned by women. The Sunshine State ranked No. 2 with 4,747 women-owned small businesses per 100,000 businesses, barely edged out by D.C.’s 4,753.
LMA Newsletter of 10-10-22
