Teaching Piano Lessons for 80 years. At 95-years old, Elba Ruilova still teaches piano lessons four afternoons a week from her west Tampa home. She began teaching when she was 15.
An alarming number of businesses are dropping memberships in Tampa Bay & Co., the tourism promotion agency for Hillsborough County. Sixty-two members failed to re-up since Oct. 1, the start of the group's fiscal year, or 8 percent of the 750 businesses on the rolls the year before. That's the largest drop since 2002, when tourism went into free-fall after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Most are small businesses that sell goods and services to hotels, restaurants and attractions, said Steve Hayes, executive vice president. "Any time the economy has a downturn, the hardest hit are small businesses," he said. Unlike Pinellas County's tourism agency, Tampa Bay & Co. solicits business members and gets about 10 percent of revenues from the fees they pay. But it's not all about the money, said president Paul Catoe, Thursday during a meeting of directors. Members are critical links to the community that keep the agency in touch with what's going on in the industry.
[Last modified: Apr 24, 2008 06:32 PM]
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