The Tourism Development Alliance of Georgia's 2009 Policy Priorities Include:

Tourism Development

• the adoption of tax and/or other economic incentives, similar to those now in place in Kentucky, North Carolina and Florida, to stimulate incremental private sector investment in tourism assets in Georgia, including hotels, convention and meeting facilities, and tourist attractions; and
• collaboration among the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, the General Assembly and the Georgia tourism industry to identify the best mechanism for encouraging quality tourism development in Georgia.

State Tourism Marketing

Every Southeastern U.S. state that directly competes with Georgia invests 25% to 100% more in state funded advertising and promotion than Georgia.

Tourism generated $2.4 billion and yet our neighboring states are making significant incremental public investments in marketing and advertising that will result in a relative loss of tourism revenue and/or market share for Georgia.

If Georgia could increase its visitation by only ten percent (from 15% to 17%, for example) this alone would generate an additional $85 Million in state tax revenue and an additional $57 Million in local tax revenues

• Advertising is a key building block to increasing tourism in Georgia.
  
• Georgia ad recallers are twice as likely to go to Georgia than non-recallers.

Local Tourism Marketing

Hotel motel tax was originally intended to create a revenue stream for local governments to invest in marketing their entire geographic area & all of its assets as a destination for leisure & business travelers. 

Destination marketing is defined as an organization whose primary purpose is to solicit and service conventions and, if desired, other types of visitors and that is recognized and authorized by its appropriate local governmental entity as the representative organization exercising such functions.

Such term does not mean an individual attraction such as an amusement park, theme park, water park, family entertainment center, zoo, aquarium, museum, science center, resort, or casino."

The Tourism Development Alliance of Georgia supports continued clarification in the Georgia code that defines the acceptable uses of the Georgia Hotel/Motel Tax and protects funding for destination marketing.

Workforce Development

The private sector’s capital investment in tourism is often in excess of $ 130 million for one given project.  One of the largest issues these investors face is qualified workforce candidates in the region.  The state needs to assess current curriculums available and develop the necessary mechanism to match candidates with employers and provide opportunity for Georgians to qualify for these jobs, and so that our business community will not have to import employees from other states.

The Tourism Development Alliance of Georgia supports efforts to improve the hospitality curriculum in Georgia schools’ and develop partnerships with schools outside of Georgia that have strong hospitality curriculums.

K-12 School Calendar

The Georgia Department of Education has determined that public schools in Georgia could improve student performance by voluntarily beginning their academic year no sooner than the third week of August.  In addition, the benefits to Georgia taxpayers, governments and businesses include: 1) reduced school operating costs, since air conditioning expenses are the year’s second highest during the month of August, and 65% higher than September; 2) reduced ozone pollution, from reducing the number of trips made by Georgia’s 14,700 school buses during “Ozone Season” (May through September); and 3) reduced school and workforce absenteeism, as demonstrated in Texas in 2002 – a 60% reduction in school absenteeism when the calendar start date moved from early August to the third week of August.