A nonprofit could take over tourism marketing in Collier County

• Collier County’s Tourist Development Council has recommended privatizing its tourism marketing efforts.
• The proposed change would create a nonprofit organization funded by a portion of the county’s tourist tax.
• Proponents argue privatization would make marketing more nimble, efficient, and better funded.
• The final decision on whether to privatize the tourism division rests with county commissioners.

A proposal to privatize tourism marketing efforts in Collier County has inched forward.

On Dec. 12, the county’s Tourist Development Council voted unanimously to accept a restructuring study and to recommend in favor of privatizing the promotional efforts handled by the county’s tourism division, including events and group sales.

The final decision will be up to county commissioners.

If approved, the new destination marketing organization would operate as a nonprofit, receiving a share of the county’s tourist tax dollars, which are now used in-house by the tourism division to lure visitors.

The county charges a 5% tourist tax on overnight stays at hotels and other vacation rentals. Those taxes are used to fund destination marketing, beach maintenance, and other tourism-related attractions and activities, including the county’s sports complex in East Naples.

Hurricanes prompted closer look at governance

In February, the county manager’s office hired Wert Marketing Group LLC, headed up by the county’s former tourism director, to study alternative governance models in an effort to improve operational efficiency and flexibility and to enhance market responsiveness. The decision followed back-to-back hurricanes in late 2024 that left the county scrambling to combat the negative publicity that slowed tourism — and a directive by the county manager to explore operational issues with the tourism division in November.

Privatization would align with the county’s shift toward what’s known as priority-based budgeting, designed to cut costs, while boosting efficiency and effectiveness.

At the Tourist Development Council meeting, John Mullins, the county’s communications director, explained that should the council accept the study and agree with the recommendation to privatize the destination marketing efforts, it would require many more steps to make the conversion a reality.

County commissioners would have to consider the study and the recommendation. If they’re in agreement, they would then decide on the next steps.

Then county staff would determine the best way to proceed, returning to the Tourist Development Council with recommendations on how the new organization should be governed and funded — before those recommendations would go to county commissioners for final consideration and approval, Mullins said.

Privatization aligns with county cost-cutting efforts

Collier Commissioner Chris Hall, who serves as the chairman of the Tourist Development Council, supported moving forward. He couldn’t attend the meeting, but he provided a statement — read by Mullins.

In the statement, Hall, who is the only commissioner to have seen the governance study, fully endorsed taking the next steps toward privatization. He’s been a big proponent of priority-based budgeting — and cutting government costs and waste.

“The most consistently accessed information on our county website is the four p’s, pets, permits, potable water and poop,” Hall said. “We’re local government managing infrastructure, ensuring public health, safety and welfare. That’s what we do. Sometimes, well. However, government is not good at being nimble, and to a point that’s by design.”

Not being nimble, he said, puts the destination at a disadvantage in its tourism marketing efforts with “other parts of our beautiful state that operate under a different and more flexible private sector governance model.”

“Several times since the 2024 hurricane season, the people on this dais have seen examples of how bureaucracy can get in its own way,” he said. “So, if we’re going to do it, let’s do it the best way, with three more p’s, public-private partnerships.”

Privatization could have many benefits

Based on his research, Wert told the Tourist Development Council he believed a private organization would be able to “change direction more quickly,” and provide many other valuable benefits.

“It certainly does help to optimize visitor spending,” he said. “It really streamlines operations.”

County staff could be reassigned to other duties, and the new organization could operate more transparently and work more closely and effectively with tourism partners, including hotels and attractions, to respond to market shifts, Wert said.

He said it took four months after hurricanes Helene and Milton hit last fall for the county-operated tourism bureau to be able to “tell the world that Collier County was fine.”

With a private organization, there could be opportunities to increase funding for marketing, which is now limited to a share of tourist taxes, and to pay for more staffing, Wert said.

The tourism division has a staff of nine, down from a high of 13, and it’s not likely to increase, with the county commission’s efforts to “reduce the size of government,” despite the growth in visitor numbers and spending, including by groups and international tourists, over the past decade, he said.

“The likelihood of the county saying, ‘Yes, go hire some more staff,’ is pretty low. Just probably is not going to happen,” Wert said.

Most destination marketing organizations are nonprofits

John Lambeth, CEO of Civitas, which partnered with Wert Marketing Group on the governance study, shared that more than 84% of the 1,400 destination marketing organizations his company tracks across the country operate as nonprofits. Many of those nonprofits are run like a chamber of commerce, with a 501(c)(6) designation, which is the recommended route for Collier County.

As part of the study, Lambeth said he interviewed two tourism executives in San Antonio, Texas and Kissimmee, Florida, who had been involved in the conversion process from a government to a nonprofit marketing organization, and the conversions resulted in “more of a public-private partnership sort of arrangement.”

“The feedback we heard from them is that (the) transition in both cases has been quite successful,” he said. “Both the government entities and the private entities have been very happy with the results.”

The results, he said, include improving “speed to market,” and a “sense of being a bit more nimble, in terms of reacting to the marketplace quickly.”

Another positive outcome: The ability to recruit the needed talent for the marketing efforts, with a bigger budget, which could come from grants and tourism partners, Lambeth said.

He said a strong public-private partnership is needed to ensure transparency and accountability, through a formal contract.

In Florida, nearly half of the destination marketing organizations are nonprofits, with a trend toward favoring that model, Lambeth said.

With the privatization, the Tourist Development Council could still serve in the same advisory role, making recommendations on budgets and spending to the county commission, he said.

“So, nothing would change in your role,” Lambeth told the council.

Some of the county employees, whose jobs could be eliminated, could move into other county jobs, or find jobs with the new private marketing organization, he said.

County commission will consider next steps next year

The county commission is expected to consider the study results and recommendations to move forward with privatization in the first quarter of next year.

If the new organization is created, the county would still manage and administer the tourist tax dollars for other tourism-related activities, such as beach renourishment and maintenance, and oversee the operation of the Paradise Coast Sports Complex and county museums.

Marco Island Councilman Darrin Palumbo, a member of the Tourist Development Council, said he saw the privatization proposal as a “no brainer.”

“It checks off all the boxes,” he said. “It takes some responsibility off the county commissioners. Allows us to move more swift. We have the same staff and tax and not a lot is changing.”

He emphasized that the county commission would still have the ultimate control over how tax dollars are spent for marketing. He motioned to recommend in favor of the change, then encouraged more discussion after speaking up first about the proposal.

A fast second came from Susan Becker, a long-time member of the advisory board, who works as a street concierge on Third Street South, a popular dining and shopping destination for tourists in downtown Naples. She did not question the proposal.

Naples City Councilman Bill Kramer, who represents the city on the board, said he definitely wanted to have a discussion about the proposal. Who has the ultimate control over the private organization “matters to me,” he said.

He said he didn’t buy the “nimble argument,” and thought the county could find a way to act more quickly to market shifts, including by changing its thresholds for spending in a crisis, without the need for county commission approval.

“When there’s an emergency event of any kind, all kinds of folks move quickly,” Kramer said. “That could happen without this process.”

When the comparison study has to do with San Antonio and Kissimmee, the “19,000 people that live in the city of Naples, want nothing to do with it,” he said.

“I mean, nothing,” Kramer said.

The city’s interests, he said, must be considered since Naples is such a big draw for tourists, and it feels the impact. If tourism grows, so does the impact on the city, which is already in need of more resources from the county to support its services, Kramer said.

“What needs to give is our county giving more in terms of resources for our streets and roads, our first responders,” he said. “You come from the county to a restaurant; you have a heart attack. We got to deal with that.”

He supported the idea of privatization primarily because it would allow for more funding to be raised and staff to be hired to do destination marketing, which could help local businesses. However, he reiterated the need to protect the interests of city residents — their properties and their streets.

Other board members chimed in with their support

Board member Laura Radler, a general manager at Ocean Properties, with several hotels in the Naples area, said she understood the pain felt by city residents from visitors. However, she pointed out that the tourist tax, which comes from visitors, benefits the city in a big way, including by funding much-needed beach renourishment and recently a new coastal stormwater management system that is removing unsightly pipes from its beaches.

She said that Kramer’s complaints seemed to have more to do with county decisions, not the actions of the tourism industry.

“The hotels are the ones bringing in the revenue,” Radler said. “So, if the hotels are empty, the revenue goes down. You don’t have money to renourish the beaches.”

She emphasized that in the offseason the city of Naples sees a big drop in its population, which hurts local businesses, including hotels.

Board member Nancy Kerns, a marketing specialist, said she believed a private organization could act a lot more quickly than a government one, especially in times of an emergency, such as in the aftermath of a major hurricane. She emphasized the importance of the tourism industry in Collier County — and the need to support it, especially in the offseason.

“There’s no question that the tourism brings in so many dollars, and it affects a lot of individuals, livelihoods and employment, not to mention the nice things that it affords the full-time residents here. I mean, the wonderful restaurants, the arts, museums, all that,” Kerns said.

The county needs to manage the increase in tourism smartly, she said, because “it’s coming, and we’re not going to stop it from coming.”

Clark Hill, general manager for Hilton Naples, the advisory board’s chairman, said with a private organization in charge of destination marketing, he felt the county could do a better job of managing its resources, such as the sports park, which helps to draw visitors in the offseason, including the summer.

While many blame tourists for the seasonal crunch on the county’s infrastructure, he said the finger must also be pointed at seasonal residents who number in the thousands, putting a lot more traffic on the road.

Based on the governance study and presentation heard by the council, Hill said he believed the county could see a big increase in tourist tax collections, with a private marketing organization paying “huge dividends,” and benefiting residents across the county.

Business leaders speak in support of privatization

A handful of business leaders spoke in favor of the proposal, including Jenny Gezella, president of Hoffmann Marine, which oversees several marine operations in Collier County, such as the Naples Princess and Miss Naples sightseeing cruises.

Gezella, who served as the chairwoman for a steering committee behind the privatization initiative, said the county’s tourism bureau has been vital to the success of businesses such as her own, which don’t have the same kind of reach or budget for tourism promotion.

However, she said, the bureau has seen a decline in staff and has one of the smallest budgets for promotion in the state, making it hard to remain competitive, and that needs to change.

“We have seen and felt the slump this year … and no one wants to have that,” Gezella said.

After last year’s hurricanes, she said, it took eight months for the county to counteract the negative publicity, not four months as mentioned by Wert, and “that’s just not OK.”

“We cannot continue to fall behind,” Gezella said.

Kevin Smith, the director for major gifts at Artis—Naples, said as one of the county’s largest cultural institutions it sees every day how essential a strong convention and visitors bureau, or CVB, is to “sustaining the cultural vibrancy that draws our visitors to our community.”

“While organizations like ours do promote our own programming, the CVB provides a unified destination voice that none of us can replicate individually. That countywide perspective elevates the entire tourism ecosystem,” he said.

He recognized the many challenges faced by the county-run bureau, including a rapidly expanding hotel inventory and missed opportunities to obtain state grants to help support the tourism industry.

The proposed restructuring, he said, would appear to be beneficial to arts and culture organizations and other businesses that rely on tourists, offering more efficient, timely promotional support, while ensuring “transparent stewardship” of tourist tax dollars.

Others speaking in favor of advancing the idea of privatization included representatives for the Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association, the Chubb Classic PGA Tour Champions event, the Naples Botanical Garden and United Arts Collier.

Kara Laufer, director of business development at Naples Botanical Garden, said although the attraction receives philanthropic dollars from donors, it also relies heavily on earned revenue to fund its operations, which is strongly tied to the sale of tickets not just to locals, but tourists, including for special events.

“We don’t have a huge marketing budget, so we rely on the CVB to get people to Naples, get people to Collier County, and once they visit the garden, you know that’s just a win,” she said. “And, hopefully, they’ll return on their next visit to Naples. So, the success of the CVB is directly linked to the garden’s success.”

Laura Layden is a business and government reporter. Reach her by email at laura.layden@naplesnews.com.

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