Panel puts $3 million back in state’s tourism budget

By Cy Ryan

Thursday, April 30, 2009 | 11:23 a.m.

CARSON CITY – A legislative budget subcommittee has agreed to add more than $3 million to the state’s tourism budget to beef up marketing and advertisement spending in the coming two years.

Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, says it is “counter productive” to cut heavily into the advertisement program during the present downturn in the economy and the tourism market.

And other subcommittee members agreed.

The state Tourism Commission has an authorized $9.1 million advertisement budget in the present fiscal year. Gov. Jim Gibbons reduced that to $4.5 million next fiscal year and $5.1 million in fiscal 2011.

The subcommittee boosted that to $6.1 million next fiscal year and $6.7 million in the following year. It also rejected the recommendation of the governor to combine the tourism and economic development divisions.

And it restored a full-time director for the tourism division.

Jolyn Laney, deputy director of marketing and advertisement in the division, told the subcommittee that competitors are trying to take over Nevada’s market. And the division has a new strategy.

“We are going to take over an entire BART station in the (San Francisco) Bay Area,” she said. It will be loaded with advertisements and publications. And the same thing will be done on a ferry in the Seattle area, she said.

To get some of the extra money for tourism promotion, the subcommittee agreed with a recommendation by Horsford to cut the funding for the state’s tourism office in China by half.

The state plans to spend $252,000 next year and $288,000 the following year in China to promote Nevada. But that will be reduced by half in each year.

Horsford said Nevada should concentrate now on the regional and national markets at the present time but still needs to keep a presence in China.

Steve Woodbury, interim director of tourism, said the China market has a “huge potential.” He said the government last fall allowed leisure travel outside the country.

The governor recommended that the tourism division be funded from the state’s general fund, rather than from the three-eighths of 1 percent tax on hotel rooms.

The subcommittee rejected that suggestion and will finance the tourism division with the proceeds from the room tax. But the receipts will be lower than predicted.

Legislative Fiscal Analyst Rick Combs told the subcommittee that the original projection of $17.7 million next fiscal year has not been revised to $14.4 million. And for 2011, the first prediction of $18.7 million has been downsized to $14.8 million.

Some of the money going from the room tax will still be put into the state’s general fund. But the subcommittee agreed that if the tax collections come in higher than predicted, the division could ask the Interim Finance Committee for money to boost its advertisement budget further.

The subcommittee also agreed to add $268,000 each year to the Nevada Magazine. Combs said that would keep the publication “viable.”