County Legislative Delegation Meetings

Local delegation meetings are public meetings held within each legislative district to provide constituents with a forum to educate and inform lawmakers without having to travel to Tallahassee. For our industry, this is an excellent opportunity to share information about the impacts of the tourism industry on their district and the value of tourism promotion.

In the upcoming legislative session, we expect there will once again be proposed legislation that will expand the uses of Tourist Development Taxes. It is critical that we have an industry presence at these meetings and take the opportunity to educate lawmakers, especially newly elected lawmakers, about the value of tourism promotion and the necessity of maintaining the current permissible uses of Tourist Development Taxes.

These meetings have already begun and will continue through the end of February. Establishing contact with your legislators before legislative session begins enables you to highlight priorities and concerns to help shape proposed legislation.

We encourage you to participate in these local meetings and have created various advocacy resources to assist you with local delegation engagement.

Program Goals

  1. Educate lawmakers
  2. Engage industry
  3. Foster relationships between tourism leaders and lawmakers

Tools to Facilitate Industry Engagement

Updated Whitepaper

  • The “Destination Promotion: Empowering Florida’s Growth” publication is a comprehensive report that demonstrates how tourism contributes to Floridians’ quality of life, obstacles to tourism growth, common misconceptions about Florida’s tourism industry, how state and local tourism promotion organizations attract more visitors to Florida and how tourism drives Florida’s economy.
  • It has been recently updated to include new data, facts, figures, statistics and information, including additional information on Tourist Development Taxes.

Local Delegation Guide

  • The local delegation guide is a two-page document that outlines the benefits tourism provides the state and its residents, the value of local tourism promotion and explains how local tourism promotion is funded through TDTs. It is intended to be a leave-behind that you share with your lawmakers at the local delegation meetings or emailed to them as a follow-up after the meeting.
  • It also includes a customizable section that allows you to add your logo and insert information about what your DMO has been doing or what you plan to do to attract visitors to your community. If you need assistance with personalizing this section, please contact Jennifer Fennell at CoreMessage, [email protected] or (850) 597-0057.

Elevator Speech Scripts

  • We have developed a library of two-minute elevator speech scripts that can be read verbatim at local delegation meetings. The scripts cover a number of issues, including the value of local tourism promotion, the need to preserve the current uses of Tourist Development Taxes, the origins/history of Tourist Development Taxes and legislation impacting Tourist Development Taxes.
  • You can pick and choose which speech script best suits your needs. Or, if you have other industry stakeholders attending the same meeting, you can designate people to read the different scripts.

Talking Points

  • The local delegation talking points address the value of tourism and tourism promotion. They also include a section that you can customize with local information about the impacts tourism has on your legislators’ districts and their constituents.
  • These can be used to guide your remarks at local delegation meetings.

Legislative Positions

  • This document outlines Destinations Florida’s 2025 Legislative Priorities and can be used as a leave-behind following local delegation meetings or other interactions with lawmakers.