The Panama City News Herald published this weekend an article on how Bay County landed Southwest Airlines for their new airport.
As I reported earlier St. Joe agreed to make quarterly payments to Southwest for its first three years of service in the event Southwest operates at a loss, up to $14 million the first year and $12 million the second year.
The Bay County TDC earlier this year approved an extra penny in bed taxes to aid in marketing the area for a low-cost carrier –which added $2.2 million per year to the bid. Walton County passed a half-cent increase in the bed tax and pledged it towards the effort.
Properties agreed to provide free rooms for Southwest passengers to be part of packages that Southwest could market.
Read Anatomy of a deal to land Southwest Airlines —please note that the News Herald puts the entire article on one page, a nice break from the PNJ which divides a 200-word piece over five pages that take 1 minute each to load.