When all eyes were on Tampa Bay during the Lightning's run in the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs earlier this year, Bob Morrison was looking for new ways to draw more people here for vacations.
"During the playoffs, Tampa was playing teams from significant destination markets for Hillsborough, like Chicago, Montreal, Detroit and New York," said Morrison, the executive director of the Hillsborough County Hotel & Motel Association. "It would have been really effective if we could have had a tagline running via broadcast, print or social media that said something along the lines of, 'You won't like our team, but you'll love our city.' "
So the brainstorming began on how to capitalize on momentum like that, which could break at a moment's notice. As a result, the Hillsborough County Hotel & Motel Association is joining with 15 hotels around downtown Tampa and Ybor City to create a destination district, where each business contributes to a shared fund that will go toward marketing its area of Tampa Bay.
Morrison said the program will be the first of its kind in Florida.
How does it work? Guests who stay at a participating hotel in Ybor City or Tampa will pay an additional fee, which will be collected and stored in a mutual fund that will be used exclusively for marketing purposes. That could mean adding to a campaign that Visit Tampa Bay, Hillsborough County's tourism agency, is already funding. Or it could mean creating something specific for downtown Tampa.
These additional marketing dollars would not have any effect on the current countywide room tax collections.
This kind of collective has been done by hotel and tourism groups in cities in nine other states, Morrison said, but nothing like it exists in Florida yet. The hope is to establish the program in downtown Tampa and eventually expand into other districts in Hillsborough County, like West Shore and Brandon.
Collections could begin as early as the start of next year. The program has the potential to generate $1 million a year. Right now, attorneys with the city of Tampa and Hillsborough County are working out the details of an ordinance that will allow the creation of a destination district fund.
"Our hotels would, in essence, be assessing themselves on a per-room basis. Those dollars would be used specifically for supplemental destination marketing," said Jeff Weinthaler, president of the HCHMA board of directors and general manager of the Embassy Suites Tampa Downtown Convention Center. "To move to the next level as a destination, we must have additional financial resources."
The local hotel-motel association has hired Civitas Advisors, a consulting firm based in Sacramento, Calif., to lead the formation of the marketing funding initiative in Tampa. Civitas has worked with 58 of California's 78 tourism improvement districts and a dozen more in other states.
"We view this as an opportunity to double down on our marketing efforts and build upon tourism here," Morrison said.
Contact Justine Griffin at jgriffin@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8467. Follow @SunBizGriffin.