Taxes collected on hotel stays and short-term rentals in Orange County in June, showed strong improvement over monies collected in May and at the same time last year.
The area raked in over $30.5 million in Tourist Development Taxes or TDT in June, a 7.6% jump from May, and a 1.7% increase from last year.
Comptroller Phil Diamond said a number of factors, including whether Florida sees an impact from hurricanes after Debby, could tip the rest of the summer’s collections, one way or another.
“Given the direction of the hurricane, that could have caused our numbers to really jump or really fall. Hopefully, it is the last, but if you listen to the predictions, it won't be the last. And you know, we need to keep an eye out for that, because that's something that I think could very much affect our numbers, either positively or negatively,” Diamond said.
Diamond said luckily Hurricane Debby only brought some strong rain and wind to Central Florida.
“And history shows that this development tax can turn around on a dime. We can have good months, we can have bad months, and oftentimes there's absolutely no warning of that. So I would just say, stay tuned,” Diamond said.
The latest Colorado State University predictions suggests there could still be 23 named storms and six major hurricanes this year.
Visit Orlando said, despite good TDT numbers for the area, hotel occupancy was down in June, by 1.5% from June 2023.
The group said Orlando’s hotel demand for the third quarter, between July and September of this year, could lag behind last year, with room bookings, down by 1% compared with last year, while short-term rentals are up by 3%.
Advance airline ticket sales to Orlando are also up by 5.4%.
