{"id":32830,"date":"2025-11-04T15:02:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T15:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/32830\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T15:02:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T15:02:10","slug":"orange-countys-hotel-tax-draws-26m-in-september","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/32830\/","title":{"rendered":"Orange County’s hotel tax draws $26M in September"},"content":{"rendered":"

The biggest thing to shake up Orlando\u2019s tourism industry is the opening of Universal Orlando\u2019s Epic Universe theme park.<\/p>\n

Orange County\u2019s hotel tax generated $26 million in September \u2014 the most revenue ever collected during the month. But officials warn the big increases seen the last few months are starting to level out.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter a strong, hot summer, TDT collections cooled off in September with the start of the fall season,\u201d Orange County Comptroller Phil Diamond<\/a> said in a press release<\/a> about September, which includes Labor Day and then many students around the country returning to school.<\/p>\n

Acknowledging the record-breaking September, Diamond\u2019s Office said the total amount of revenue for Fiscal Year 2024-25 reached nearly $385 million, marking the highest annual collections ever.<\/p>\n

Orange County collects a 6% surcharge \u2014 also known as tourism development tax (TDT<\/a>) \u2014 on hotel rooms and short-term stays in the theme park capital of the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The biggest thing to shake up Orlando\u2019s tourism industry has been the opening of Universal Orlando\u2019s Epic Universe theme park. Since the new park opened in May, TDT proceeds have gone up dramatically. For instance, in August, the tax revenue was up 11% year over year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The September 2025 total, however,\u00a0was only up about 1% compared to September 2024.<\/p>\n

Comcast Corp.\u2019s theme park revenue skyrocketed nearly 19% in the third quarter because of Epic Universe, the company said<\/a> in its latest quarterly earnings this week.<\/p>\n

With the latest hotel tax collection, Diamond\u2019s Office said some of the proceeds will be used for the initial debt service payment to the city of Orlando for about $27 million toward the $400 million Camping World Stadium renovation project. The county also plans to make a $10 million payment to the University of Central Florida\u2019s $90 million football stadium tower expansion and renovation project.<\/p>\n

The issue of how Orange County spends TDT revenue continues to be debated.<\/p>\n

In December, the Orange County Commission plans to discuss<\/a> and look at its contract with Visit Orlando, which receives $100 million from TDT to promote Orlando and draw in more visitors. Diamond\u2019s audit this year raised<\/a> accounting and spending questions about Visit Orlando\u2019s funds.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The biggest thing to shake up Orlando\u2019s tourism industry is the opening of Universal Orlando\u2019s Epic Universe theme…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[6113,1335,139,141,140,2042,16677,11018,11020,11021],"class_list":{"0":"post-32830","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-epic-universe","9":"tag-orange-county","10":"tag-orlando","11":"tag-orlando-headlines","12":"tag-orlando-news","13":"tag-orlando-theme-parks","14":"tag-orlando-tourism","15":"tag-phil-diamond","16":"tag-tdt","17":"tag-tourist-development-tax"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}