Thrive
Visit St. Pete-Clearwater: ‘Really good momentum’
Pinellas County collected more than $90 million in tourism development taxes.
Visit St. Pete-Clearwater, Pinellas County’s tourist marketing organization, provided a marketing update and released its fiscal year 2025 tourist development tax collection data at the Nov. 19 Tourist Development Council meeting.
Chief marketing officer Steve Grimes explained that while the organization hired a new ad agency, Envisionit, it is still hard at work creating initiatives to boost tourism in the area.
“There’s some really good momentum and we want to build on that,” he said.
This year, Visit St. Pete-Clearwater was able to purchase billboard space in Times Square in New York City for the first time. The agency is also marketing in Philadelphia and other locations.
Grimes added that the organization launched a new program to encourage individuals to use their paid time off (PTO) to vacation in the area. The initiative rewards guests with gift cards that they can use locally if they plan a trip before the end of the year, through the agency’s Ripe booking platform.
According to the Society for Human Resource Management, 48% of employees in the country expect to have remaining PTO available even at the end of the year.
The organization has seen “a great uptick in some hotel bookings through our engine” since starting the program, he said.
Additionally, Visit St. Pete-Clearwater collaborated with Visit Florida and the Wheel of Fortune production team for a “Live More Floridays” giveaway episode in October.
For the fourth consecutive year, Pinellas collected more than $90 million in tourism development taxes. This year’s total was $92,530,682. The fiscal year was from October 2024 to September 2025.
However, this year’s collection was 4.4% less than last year. In FY 2024, Pinellas collected $96,758,109.
“Considering we just went through two massive hurricanes this past year, it shows the resiliency of our area,” said Visit St. Pete-Clearwater director of digital and data Eddie Kirsch at the Nov. 19 meeting.
The September tax collection was 14.65% higher than 2024. For the month, Clearwater ($1,366,469.52) and St. Petersburg ($612,385.90) received the most taxes.
Pinellas closed FY 2025 with more than $1.5 billion in hotel revenue.
