Visit Orlando, credited with helping build Central Florida into the nation’s top vacation place, might have misappropriated nearly $20 million in tourist-tax revenue by improperly classifying the money as private rather than public funds, Orange County auditors say.
“It’s very hard to parse out from the records which funds are which,” said assistant comptroller Wendy Kittleson, who raised the possibility Tuesday during a three-hour public discussion of Visit Orlando’s spending practices with the Board of County Commissioners.
She stressed the $19.9 million figure was an estimate based on Visit Orlando’s private revenues dating back to 2019. The tourist agency’s public revenues are subject to stricter spending rules than those private funds.
The guess flabbergasted Casandra Matej, president & CEO of Visit Orlando, who appeared before the commission to respond to a withering comptroller’s examination of the destination marketing organization, which gets over $100 million a year in tourist tax revenue to promote tourism.
“That was not in the audit,” she said, referring to the 66-page document released last month by Comptroller Phil Diamond’s team of examiners. “I mean we’re willing to look at all of our dollars. There’s not an issue there. It’s just that was the first time we heard it.”
While Visit Orlando gets some contributions from tourism companies, most of its operating budget comes from taxpayers.
“They’re making some assumptions,” Matej said of the auditors.
Diamond said examiners reviewed Visit Orlando’s reported private funds in 2023 and detemined about $3.54 million or 39% should have been classified as public money generated by the county’s Tourist Development Tax, the 6% surcharge on the cost of a hotel room or other short-term lodging. They then figured Visit Orlando might have misclassified a similar percentage in other years.
Commissioners directed Visit Orlando to square its funding and report back in December.
Diamond said his team intends to look at Visit Orlando’s records from 2019 when the funding agreement was signed through 2024 to come up with a more precise analysis.
Commissioner Kelly Martinez Semrad said it is critical for Orange County to manage its revenues wisely.
“We just got Doged,” said Semrad, a tourism economics professor at the University of Central Florida, referring to a team of auditors from the newly created Florida Department of Governmental Efficiency, or DOGE, who are conducting a state probe of county spending. “If we’re doing business in ways that don’t look transparent to the public…then we are going to be criticized and used as a state example of a county who cannot manage its TDT.”
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She listed some questionable spending the comptroller’s audit cited in its probe of Visit Orlando.
Matej defended Visit Orlando’s work, but said she considered the audit’s criticisms to be an opportunity to improve.
“In most cases, we’ve already taken action and or were in the process of taking action” to address the audit’s findings, she said.
“Orlando’s leadership in the tourism sector is not guaranteed, and we must continue to market and sell our destination with the same ambition and innovation that earned us this position. As we move forward, we will refine our practices in line with industry standards and stay focused on our mission, which is to inspire, promote and grow global travel for the economic and community benefit of Orange County,” she said.
shudak@orlandosentinel.com
