Hotel Resort Tax Down 12.6% for Year

ORLANDO-Orange County hotel resort tax revenue–money that funds the area’s largest commercial real estate project–has finished fiscal 2002 with a total $91.6 million, down from a projected $112.6 million but up from a revised county number of $90.6 million. The county booked $104.8 million in fiscal 2001.

Orange County Comptroller Martha O. Haynie expected September’s collections for the last month of the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 to be up more than the recorded $5.8 million, Haynie’s office tells GlobeSt.com. That number was the lowest of the year, down from August’s $6.5 million, the lowest at that time.

The revenue comes from a 5% tax added to each of the county’s 119,000 hotel/motel rooms. The bulk of the money is used to pay down debt on the $750 million, one-million-sf expansion of the Orange County Convention Center that hopes to be at 2.2 million sf of exhibition/meeting space in early 2003.