Letter from Executive Director Tamara Pigott

While no one in the tourism industry in Lee County would question the value of tourism to our local community, not everyone may be aware of just how staggering tourism’s economic impact is to our economy.

According to the Lee County Visitor & Convention Bureau’s (VCB) research partner Davidson Peterson Associates, total expenditures for tourism in the county in 2009 equaled $2.6 billion. That amount equates to nearly $7 million per day, $297,934 per hour, $4,966 per minute and $83 per second! Plus, tourism accounts for nearly one of every four jobs in the county or 38,159 residents directly employed by the tourism industry. That’s 22 percent of total employment in the county or nearly the population of Bonita Springs. In addition to the 38,159 direct industry jobs in 2009, the industry supported another 15,178 indirect and induced jobs, for a total of 53,337 jobs in Lee County.

Given these facts, you can just imagine what we would face without tourism’s contributions. Let’s just say that the money spent by all visitors to Lee County dropped by 50 percent. That would mean that the average Lee County household would see an increase of more than $260 in taxes to maintain government services at current levels. Not to mention that the unemployment rate would rise from a December 2009 level of nearly 14 percent to about 23 percent.

Conversely, a 10 percent increase in visitors to Lee County would generate an additional $260 million a year. That’s more than $8 per second! So you can see why it’s important for everyone in the industry to work together to market our destination to potential visitors and to ensure that they have an unforgettable experience every time they visit.

To help reward those who are doing just that, we have joined with the Greater Fort Myers Chamber of Commerce to host the Celebration of Business & Tourism Awards Luncheon and Trade Show on Thursday, May 20, from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Harborside Event Center in downtown Fort Myers. There, we will be presenting our first annual Chrysalis Awards to honor individuals and businesses who have positively impacted our local community in the six categories of Business Development, Eco-Innovation, Cultural Achievement, Education, Sports and Sales & Marketing.

I hope you’ll join us for this event to help the broader business community gain greater awareness of the tourism industry’s critical role in our economic livelihood. And I hope you will engage in partnerships whenever possible, since they improve community growth, encourage vacationers to our destination, and create job opportunities for our citizens.

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