Denis McKinnon, TDC chair, Ellis Bullock, TDC ad firm, and Dave Cleveland of Highpointe Hotels spoke Monday afternoon to the Executive Committee of the Pensacola Bay Area Chamber of Commerce about the issues concerning the Escambia County Tourism Development Commission and the Convention Visitors Bureau (CVB).
Bullock and McKinnon made it clear that while they may have communicated better, they are not trying to lead what George Hawthorne of the Gulf Coast African-American Chamber has called a “tourism coup” by pulling the CVB and tourism away from the Chamber. They had asked Collier Merrill on August 9 to make presentation on asking the Chamber to join the TDC in doing a study on how to best manage the CVB and tourism for the county.
Bullock pointed out that Escambia County is the largest county in the state that doesn’t have an independent CVB that answers to a county commission. He pointed out that Ed Schroeder, Chamber VP for Tourism who was point on administrative leave last Friday, has a tough job because he answered to three bosses, Chamber CEO, Tourism Administrative Council (TAC) which is chaired by Harlan Butler and TDC chair McKinnon. Bullock and McKinnon felt that Chamber CEO Jim Hizer had been informed of the meeting held by the hotel owners.
Dave Cleveland told the Executive Committee that governance of the CVB was never high on the list of concerns of the hotel owners. “It was may be 5, 6 or 7 on the list,” said Cleveland.
The priorities were:
1) Subsidy of the Pensacola Civic Center. “It was $100,000 to $300,000 when I was on the TAC,” said Cleveland. “Last year, it was $1.9 million before debt service.”
Hoteliers are worried that when the principal reduction is also taken out of bed taxes, there will be no money for marketing.
“We headed for some tough dialogue with the county,” said Cleveland. “Their policies are threatening the tourism effort itself. We could be out of business. There’ll be no marketing, putting us at a complete disadvantage.”
2) Management of the fourth cent of bed tax. They believe it’s being spent as the law states.
3) Legality of even subsidizing Civic Center with bed taxes.
“We need some very tough, frank conversations with the county that need to be had,” said Cleveland. He also brought up the issue of double taxation with the Pensacola Beach hotels having to pay lease fees based on percentage of revenues, plus ad valorem taxes on lease improvements and the land. “We have some monstrous to deal with. CVB was way down the list.”
Cleveland also defended Schroeder. “The irony is Ed is the one of the most loyal people I’ve ever met,” he said. “He could lose his job over loyalty.”
Cleveland insisted that the suspended Chamber VP had served as a resource to the hotel group, but had remained loyal to the chamber. He was doing the research that the TDC and TAC chairmen had asked him to do.