ORLANDO, Fla. – Visit Orlando recently came under fire from an audit conducted by the Orange County Comptroller.
The organization, which receives millions of tax dollars, was reported to have misused some of those funds. However, Visit Orlando maintains that they can justify how the tax dollars were spent.
Orange County Comptroller Phil Diamond disclosed at the end of July that the audit revealed Visit Orlando classified millions of dollars they received as private funds rather than public dollars.
The funds in question come from the Tourist Development Tax (TDT), a tax paid by visitors staying in hotels or Airbnbs in Orange County. Visit Orlando receives 30% of this tax revenue, amounting to over $100 million annually. The primary objective of the tax is to increase tourism, create more jobs, and generate additional tax revenue.
The audit highlighted expenditures on expensive dinners, car allowances, and other items. News 6’s Laverne McGee spoke exclusively with Visit Orlando President and CEO Casandra Matej to address these concerns and to understand whether the tax dollars would be better allocated elsewhere.
Matej explained that the dollars the comptroller asked Visit Orlando to reclassify did not come from hotel tax revenue. Instead, they stemmed from other sources such as the Economic Relief Credit (ERC) received during COVID and participation fees. She emphasized that these funds were not tax dollars.
Regarding her personal $12,000 transportation allowance, Matej stated it is part of her overall compensation package, a practice consistent with her predecessors since the inception of Visit Orlando.
There was also reference to an approximately $75,000 dinner in New York City. The dinner was hosted at the New York restaurant The Musket Room. Forty guests, including Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, were invited to attend a dinner featuring chefs from Capa, a Michelin-starred steakhouse.
“We partnered with Michelin. So, what has been noted as a dinner was actually an agreement that we had with Michelin, and the dinner itself was just one of the deliverables,” Matej said. “We also had a variety of marketing and other deliverables...”
She also responded to inquiries about why Visit Orlando needs to promote tourism when several of their members are huge companies already are doing marketing to other parts of the world.
“We’re the only entity that also talks about our arts and culture, our eco-tourism, our different neighborhoods, the main street districts downtown, the Winter Park, Winter Garden. And so that’s our job. We get tell the entire story about Orlando,” she said.
Facing public questions about the use of TDT dollars, including suggestions that the funds could be redirected to road repairs, schools, or other services, Matej clarified that the funds are a restricted public resource governed by state statute, which limits their use to tourism-related development.
Diamond believes he has proved discrepancies.
“What we said and what we proved is that no, that’s public money,” Diamond told News 6. “You need to pay it back to the public accounts, and you need to let the taxpayers know what you’re doing with it. So that’s probably the biggest thing in our report. We also found that, one of the things that people care about is if you give them $100 million a year, what do we get for that money?”
The comptroller has made recommendations for improvements, and the county will decide on any next steps.
Visit Orlando’s CEO is scheduled to make a presentation before the Orange County Board on Aug. 26.