Today is the last day for the Washington Tourism Office.

Some states have cut their tourism marketing budgets in recent years, but Washington State is taking things a step further—it’s eliminating its tourism agency altogether, becoming the first state to do so.

Closure of the office is expected to save about $1.8 million annually. But with tourism spending reaching $15.2 billion in 2010, and $1 billion generated in state and local tax revenue—based on the preliminary 2010 Travel Impacts Report/Washington State Department of Commerce and Washington State Tourism—the tourism budget, which even in previous years when it had reached up to $7 million, seems like a drop in the bucket considering the favorable return.

Determining just how much of the revenues can be pegged to the work of the tourism bureau is difficult however, and states are in a money crunch looking for any opportunity to cut funding from one program to save another in the short run.

But that doesn’t mean there won’t be any future tourism marketing for Washington State. The possible closure of the tourism bureau had been on the radar for at least a year, and a private group of tourism industry stakeholders formed the Washington Tourism Alliance in March, with the goal of sustaining statewide destination marketing campaigns and communications.

In just two months, the 17 founding partners, 16 associate partners and more than 120 members have raised more than $300,000. Expect the new group to also affiliate with founding member Seattle Convention and Visitors Bureau and its advertising campaign “Why Tourism Matters” to help promote the value of tourism to the state’s citizens and politicans.

Photo: Washington Tourism Alliance

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Fla. Gov-Elect Rick Scott

As per the plan specified in the economic development proposal put out by Florida Gov-elect Rick Scott’s transition team, VisitFlorida – the state’s official tourism marketing organization, is about to see it’s budget jump from $29.4 million to $62.5 million.

At a time when Connecticut has a $1 tourism budget, an influential Utah thinktank is recommending abolishing their tourism organization, Illinois is shutting down visitor centers and most other states are slashing tourism budgets to plug deficits in state budgets, Florida is not only about to see its budget double, but it might just see it get quadrupled.

That’s because the the Gov-Elect’s plan also calls for 1-to-1 matching funds from Florida’s tourism industry. Given how VisitFlorida saved their combined skins in the aftermath of the gulf oil spill, there shouldn’t be any problem in collecting the matching funds.

It essentially means that Florida’s tourism budget will be $125 million per year. It allows Florida to leapfrog Hawaii ($71.8m), California ($50.0m) , Illinois ($48.9m) and Texas ($34.3) as the state with the biggest tourism budget.

It also beats the tourism budgets of many big countries including Canada, Australia, France, South Africa and Spain.

Tourism budgets

By the numbers, the plan aims to add:-

– 1.6 million incremental visits
– $3.6 billion in direct spending
– $225 million incremental state sales tax collections
– 35,500 jobs annually 

In 2009, Florida got 80.9 million visitors which generated $60.9 billion in travel spending and $3.65 billion in sales tax collections, and provided employment for 968,400 Floridians.

In addition to funding for VisitFlorida, the plan also calls for Florida’s $18 billion recreational marine industry to prepare a list of projects to help bring back the 55,000 jobs that the industry has lost.

Full Report – Fla. Economic Development Plan (pdf)

*Clarification: In an earlier version, the article above said “Utah is thinking about abolishing its tourism organization”

The Empire State has defunded and defanged the iconic I Love NY tourism campaign, citing budget woes. Instead, the NY Senate is forcing state tourism officials to put agricultural attractions in front of visitors looking for travel information.

I Love NY

The number of visitors to New York State dropped by 3.9% in 2009 with visitor spending down 14%, and how does the state respond?

By scrapping New York’s contract with ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi. By letting go Thomas Ranese, the marketing officer hired to run the I Love NY tourism promotion campaign.

Tourism officials also confirmed that New York will not be running an advertising campaign this summer.

Even worse, NY Gov. David Paterson’s budget cuts have made it harder for state officials to travel out-of-state, so New York is not being represented at the Orlando International Pow Wow (May 15-19, 2010).

The U.S. Travel Association’s International Pow Wow is the single biggest marketplace for selling US travel to international buyers, with over 1,000 travel organizations from all over the USA and close to 1,500 international and domestic buyers from more than 70 countries. Pow Wow is expected to generate over $3.5 billion worth of future business in US travel, but New York won’t be there. 

The state is also on its way to scrapping the matching funds program which helps local tourism bureaus do their own promotion. New York has an allocated tourism promotion budget of $10.6 million for 2010-11, but $4 million in matching funds was denied to local tourism bureaus. 

But all this doesn’t mean they want to throw away the ’I Love NY’ brand. On April 27, the NY Senate passed legislation (S.6673) which mandates the use of I Love NY to promote “farms, farmers’ markets, wineries, harvest festivals, and other agriculturally significant tourist destinations.”

Sen. Darrel J. Aubertine, chair of the NY Senate Agriculture Committee, said that “Including agricultural tourism in the I Love New York campaign will bolster both industries and help highlight the too often forgotten cornerstone of our economy in New York—the farms and agricultural businesses that support jobs statewide.”

The Senator should know that you can’t promote squat if you scrap the tourism promotion budget, cancel the advertising campaign, fire the ad agency and refuse to attend trade events with international buyers.

Photo – SliceofNYC