14D: Sustainable Destination Management Funding

Advocate for regional or statewide efforts to explore diverse funding streams, including non-public revenues and entrepreneurial endeavors, for destination marketing organizations. DMOs in Indiana are largely funded by real-time hospitality tax collections. Indy is the exception in that it is funded by the CIB based on prior year collections. While the tourism industry should support its primary marketing and management functions, such a reliance on one funding mechanism can create extreme volatility in weathering downturns when the work of DMOs are perhaps needed the most. Such direct connections have also resulted in lower funding relative to many peers and puts capital improvements, its operations, and the sales and marketing of those improvements in competition for the same funds.