Daytona Beach tourism board approves $15.7M budget in 'softening' year

Jim Abbott, The Daytona Beach News-Journal
·4 min read

Amid a summer tourist season that’s expected to fall short of record-setting numbers a year ago, the Halifax Area Advertising Authority board of directors this week unanimously approved a proposed $15.7 million budget that includes money to expand Daytona Beach's 'Beach On' marketing campaign.

The $15,670,200 budget for the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1 represents a modest 1.9% increase over the $15,384,270 for the current fiscal year. It’s based on estimated tourism bed-tax collections of $13,077,109 by the county’s finance division.

That estimate is 6.2% lower than the estimate of $13,939,270 for the current fiscal year.

It reflects the softening of the record-setting tourism boom in Volusia County over the past two years as the nation emerged from the lockdowns and global travel restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Lori Campbell Baker, executive director of the Daytona Beach Area Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Beachgoers pack the shoreline along Daytona Beach. The Daytona Beach tourism board this week approved its proposed budget for the 2023-24 fiscal year, which includes money to expand the 'Beach On' marketing campaign.
Beachgoers pack the shoreline along Daytona Beach. The Daytona Beach tourism board this week approved its proposed budget for the 2023-24 fiscal year, which includes money to expand the 'Beach On' marketing campaign.

The projected revenue also includes a carry-over of $2,544,091 from the current year’s budget.

“This is arguably the biggest vote you’ll take all year,” Baker told members of the of the county-appointed tourism board that oversees and funds the Daytona Beach Area CVB at Wednesday’s meeting. “This is what will help us sell this destination even better than we are now.”

Budget faces County Council approval in August

The county collects a 6% tourism tax on hotels and lodges with half of the revenues going to fund the county-run Ocean Center convention complex in Daytona Beach. The other half goes to the county’s three tourism ad authorities to market their respective areas — the Daytona Beach/Halifax area, Southeast Volusia and West Volusia — as tourist and special event destinations.

The three tourism ad authorities are slated to present their proposed budgets for approval by the Volusia County Council at its Aug. 15 meeting.

The months-long budget process has unfolded as the county is emerging from a costly and time-consuming recovery from damages to its 47 miles of beaches from back-to-back tropical storms Ian and Nicole this past fall.

When Ian and Nicole arrived, Volusia County had just capped another robust year for tourism. For the fiscal year that concluded on Sept. 30, 2022, record-high overall tourism bed-tax collections of $33.7 million countywide were more than 20% higher than the previous year, which also set a record.

However, the monthly collection total for November, in the wake of the storms, showed a decline of 15.6% countywide compared with the same month a year ago. In the coastal districts of Halifax and Southeast Volusia, collections for the month were down 16.5% and 22.8%, respectively.

In case you missed it: Daytona Beach tourism works to weather impact of tropical storms Ian and Nicole

The storm’s impact also derailed a string of record-setting monthly collection totals for the Halifax district that started in March 2021.

For May, the most recent month available, bed-tax collections for the Halifax district, which includes the core beachside tourism corridor along State Road A1A, were down 7.58% compared with the same month a year ago, according to the Volusia County Revenue Division. For the first eight months of the fiscal year that started on Oct. 1, Halifax collections are down 1.4%.

Budget includes money to 'evolve' 'Beach On' campaign

The proposed budget includes $8.2 million media budget to expand on the “Beach On” marketing campaign launched this past fall by The Zimmerman Agency, the Tallahassee-based marketing firm under contract with the HAAA board to promote the destination.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Spencer Gibboney, the agency’s associate media director, outlined the agency’s plans to expand the “Beach On” campaign through data-driven strategies with a focus on digital and paid social media platforms aimed at markets throughout Florida and the Northeast as well as well as Indianapolis, Chicago and Detroit.

In April, visitors pose in front of towering 3D anamorphic video ad that brought Daytona Beach's "Beach On" marketing campaign to New York's Times Square.
In April, visitors pose in front of towering 3D anamorphic video ad that brought Daytona Beach's "Beach On" marketing campaign to New York's Times Square.

“We want to be able to capitalize on the ‘Beach On’ awareness,” Gibboney said. “We want to continue to evolve the ‘Beach On’ story.”

Birth of 'Beach On': Daytona Beach has a new tourism slogan. Here's what replaces 'Wide. Open. Fun.'

Zimmerman also is allocating 1% of its advertising budget as a contingency fund to embrace unforeseen opportunities. For instance, the HAAA board in January approved spending $250,000 for the agency to move quickly to conceive and execute a towering 3-dimensional anamorphic billboard touting Daytona Beach as a tourism destination in New York City’s Times Square.

On Wednesday, Gibboney said that the 15-second video ads that played 20 times an hour nonstop from April 3-30 in the famed intersection logged 10.6 million impressions through cell-phone tracking technology reaching potential visitors from 20 countries within a one-block radius from a total of 78.25 hours of exposure throughout the month.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Daytona Beach tourism board approves $15.7M budget in 'softening' year