Monday, May 31, 2010

Franklin County awarded emergency advertising dollars

Gov. Crist and FCTDC Chair Helen Spohrer signing grant agreement

On Sunday afternoon May 30, Governor Charlie Crist met in Destin with Helen Spohrer, Chair of the Franklin County Tourist Development Council (FCTDC) along with representatives from several other tourist related councils from throughout the area.

The Governor’s office called the meeting so that Gov. Crist could dispense part of the $25 million dollars in emergency advertising monies received from the oil conglomerate British Petroleum (BP).

On the eve of Florida’s most productive tourist season, BP allocated the funds to the state in an effort to diminish the negative impact the Gulf oil spill caused by the company was having on Florida’s tourism.

The governor awarded Franklin County a little over $252,000 to commence with an emergency advertising campaign to promote the county’s unique destinations points.

Members of the Franklin County Tourist Development Council are now tasked with working out the details of exactly how the monies will be spent, with Spohrer reporting to the County Commission at their Tuesday June 1, meeting.

2 comments:

  1. Mayor Van:

    I was curious as to how our bed tax collection amount for the past 45 days compared to the same period last year. Do you know how I would go about finding this information out?

    Thank you.

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  2. Hey Robin,

    Thanks for asking! I went ahead and took the liberty of checked into the matter for you. The Administrator for the Franklin County Tourist Development County (FCTDC) told me that the numbers are only available through March.

    Apparently, there’s about a 45-60 day delay between when people rent the rooms and when the FCTDC receive the numbers and the tax.

    I do realize that the information could have been useful in analyzing the impact the bad publicity surrounding the BP oil spill is having on our local market, but we’ll have to wait for at least another month to know for sure.

    Mayor Van-

    ReplyDelete