August Resort Tax Collections Lowest Since Last December

ORLANDO-Orange County’s best barometer on the financial health of the area’s 119,000 hotel and motel rooms, the 5% room tax, logged in at $6.5 million for August, the lowest of the year.

The August number was even lower than December 2001 which dipped to $6.6 million, a 28% drop from November 2001. August collections were 8.7% lower than July and lower than the $7.1 million collections in August 2001.

The bulk of the room tax revenue is used to pay down debt on the $750 million, one-million-sf expansion of the Orange County Convention Center which hopes to be at 2.2 million sf of exhibition/meeting space in early 2003. That size would place Orange County among the top five largest convention sites in the United States, according to county tourism officials.