Tourism-funding bill now up to the House

A tourism promotion funding bill sailed through a House committee Friday, clearing the way for the entire body to consider a measure already approved by the Senate.

The House Workforce Services and Community and Economic Development Standing Committee unanimously passed out SB7, which would create a tourism marketing performance fund that would receive $55 million in general fund money over a decade and ultimately would be self-supporting.

The bill would get an initial $10 million from the general fund to help the state promote tourism to out-of-staters, and that amount would drop by $1 million a year. But the fund also would receive a percentage of tourism-generated sales tax money in later years, up to $3 million annually. The bill also creates and funds a cooperative program with cities, counties and nonprofit organizations to advertise and promote tourism.

Tourism-promotion bills have died the past two years because of disagreements in the industry about the taxing methods, but SB7 has "wide and deep" support, according to Nan Anderson, director of the Utah Tourism Industry Coalition. More than 40 organizations back the bill, she said.

"From urban to rural, from north to south, east to west, from Box Elder to Washington County, never have we seen the industry band together as we have seen for SB7," Anderson told the committee. "In short, Utah needs an advertising and marketing campaign to match the stellar quality of our tourism product. Utah is second to none with regards to our product, and we need funding to advertise and market Utah to the world."

Supporters on Friday said the state needs to act in order to reverse a loss in tourism market share to surrounding states in recent years. Utah state government spends $900,000 annually on advertising to out-of-staters, although counties do some promotion through car-rental and restaurant taxes, and ski resorts and Ski Utah also spend several million dollars annually on promotion.

"To have the budget of Vail, Colo., summer promotion only to promote the state for the entire year, it makes it very hard to be competitive and certainly plays into our market share losses," said Leigh von der Esch, interim deputy director of the Utah Travel Council and director of the Utah Film Commission.

Randy Harmsen, chairman of the Utah Travel Development Board, noted that many outsiders before the 2002 Olympic Winter Games had negative perceptions about Utah but thought positively about Colorado. The Olympics flip-flopped that, but since then the perceptions have reverted to pre-Olympics status.

"This," Harmsen said of SB7, "is a critical economic stimulus bill."

Several senators also praised the bill.