{"id":408244,"date":"2026-09-23T13:40:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T13:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/408244\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T13:40:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T13:40:15","slug":"santiago-corrada-helped-grow-tampa-bay-tourism-past-1-billion-now-visit-tampa-bay-faces-a-new-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/408244\/","title":{"rendered":"Santiago Corrada Helped Grow Tampa Bay Tourism Past $1 Billion. Now Visit Tampa Bay Faces a New Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Visit Tampa Bay\u2019s<\/a> 2014 annual meeting, Santiago Corrada told Hillsborough County\u2019s tourism industry that he wanted taxable hotel revenue to reach $600 million within three years, a jump of more than $175 million from the roughly $423 million the county\u2019s hotels were generating when he arrived.<\/p>\n

The number mattered beyond bragging rights because Florida law reserved an additional percentage point of tourist-development tax for counties that crossed the state\u2019s high-impact tourism threshold, something only eight counties had done when Corrada began pushing Hillsborough to become the ninth.<\/p>\n

Corrada had spent his first year studying the law, Hillsborough\u2019s hotel business, and nearly 500,000 future convention and meeting room nights already on the books, enough to show him when hotels would fill and, more importantly, where the empty nights remained between conventions and major events.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the support of the hotel Industry, which initially volunteered to impose the tourism development tax on hotel guests more than 40 years ago, the target was reached, and Hillsborough County became eligible for the additional tax. Eventually, the county began collecting the sixth cent in 2019 after Visit Tampa Bay<\/a> and the hotel industry pushed county leaders to levy it, creating a stream of tourist-tax money that Corrada estimates now generates an additional $13 million each year.<\/p>\n

More than a decade after Tampa Bay\u2019s hoteliers and Corrada put that unlikely number before the industry, the sixth cent it helped produce is now being reallocated to help publicly finance the Tampa Bay Rays\u2019 proposed stadium near Raymond James Stadium<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Long before Hillsborough chased $600 million in hotel revenue, Corrada took over another institution facing numbers nobody wanted, with problems at Miami Edison Senior High School visible in its hallways before they appeared on a state report card.<\/p>\n

When Corrada became principal of Miami Edison Senior High School in 1998, the overachieving son of Cuban exiles inherited a school where community activists had gathered support from about 500 families for a possible boycott, fleas infested the halls and some students lived with poverty severe enough that contemporary reporting described them fainting from hunger.<\/p>\n

Corrada met the activists in a sweltering back room of a Little Haiti church, then made himself difficult to separate from Edison, attending football games, dropping into Saturday tutoring and senior picnics, learning students by name and absorbing two failing state grades at a school where three out of four students spoke Creole at home.<\/p>\n

By November 2002, Edison\u2019s football team had gone 9-1 for its first winning regular season in 11 years, and Corrada<\/a> came through a pep-rally banner wearing a pirate eye patch and sash before dropping into his trademark split at center court as bass shook the bleachers and students packed into the gym erupted around him.<\/p>\n

The season ended differently after an eligibility dispute wiped out Edison\u2019s playoff run and a judge denied the alumni association\u2019s attempt to save it, leaving Corrada to return from court, tell the students himself and resume his usual place in the lobby monitoring class change.<\/p>\n

Wide receiver Jackie Chambers found him there and promised, \u201cDon\u2019t worry, Mr. C. We\u2019ll take it out on them in basketball,\u201d breaking the exhaustion on Corrada\u2019s face with a smile before the principal answered, \u201cThank God for you, Jackie!\u201d<\/p>\n

His jobs grew larger after Edison \u2014 first in Miami government, then at Tampa City Hall, where the former Convention Center & Tourism Director eventually coordinated more than 50 departments and divisions as chief of staff, and finally at Visit Tampa Bay<\/a> in 2013.<\/p>\n

At Visit Tampa Bay, that meant hotels, restaurants, attractions, airlines, cruise lines, sports teams, convention organizers, and public officials- an industry built from rooms, airplane seats, venues and businesses that belonged to other people but had to work together closely enough for Tampa Bay to compete with larger destinations.<\/p>\n

Five years after Hillsborough qualified for the sixth consecutive year, Visit Tampa Bay put another number on the board \u2014 $1 billion in annual taxable hotel revenue by 2025 \u2014 and the county, once again thanks to the heavy efforts of the hotel industry working with Visit Tampa Bay, achieved the goal two years early and has remained above $1 billion for four consecutive fiscal years, according to Corrada.<\/p>\n

Tourist-tax collections climbed from roughly $21 million when Corrada arrived to about $70 million in 2024, even as Hillsborough added only about 4,100 hotel rooms during his 13 years at Visit Tampa Bay and the 1980s-era Tampa Marriott Water Street remained the county\u2019s largest hotel by room count.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was selling what you had at the time,\u201d Corrada said, describing a strategy that increasingly filled the gaps between conventions and sporting events with leisure travelers rather than waiting for the next Super Bowl, Final Four or major meeting to refill the hotels.<\/p>\n

Hillsborough hotels now regularly run in the 70% and 80% occupancy range while Visit Tampa Bay is looking at convention business for 2035 and 2038, and Corrada says Tampa is already losing some groups because the city cannot host enough large conventions at the same time.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if you have a bigger convention center, where are those people going to stay?\u201d Corrada said. \u201cThe demand is there. It\u2019s just the inventory is not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Visit Tampa Bay can recruit a convention for 2035 without knowing how much public money it will receive when the delegates arrive, because its county agreements run two years at a time while incentives, concessions, leases and other contractual obligations attached to that business can remain in force for more than a decade.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou just can\u2019t go back and renege on a contract or a lease and say, \u2018Oh, I can no longer pay this. I have to pay less,\u2019\u201d Corrada said, explaining that those commitments get funded before Visit Tampa Bay turns to staffing and other programming.<\/p>\n

During the pandemic, hotel occupancy fell to 49% and Hillsborough\u2019s tourist-tax collections dropped 14.1% to $30.42 million, forcing Visit Tampa Bay to furlough or lay off employees as the revenue supporting its operations fell with travel.<\/p>\n

Craig J. Richard, president and CEO of the Tampa Bay Economic Development Council, has watched Corrada and his team work through hurricanes, the pandemic and earlier threats to Visit Tampa Bay\u2019s funding while the county\u2019s hotel business continued to grow.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have bounced back repeatedly from hurricanes, the pandemic, and dire threats to their funding with absolute class and professionalism,\u201d Richard told TBBW.<\/p>\n

Hotel revenue has since recovered beyond its pre-pandemic peak, but Visit Tampa Bay, like all destination marketing organizations in Florida and around the country, still does not control how much of the resulting tourist-tax revenue reaches its budget, because the Tourism Development Council makes recommendations and county commissioners ultimately decide the allocations.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of it is really,\u201d Corrada said when asked how much of that decision was outside his control. \u201cThe only thing we can control is our relationships and our effectiveness with the allocated dollars. You give us so much, and then we can do so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Corrada wants to work closely with the Rays<\/a>, whose broadcasts Visit Tampa Bay has bought advertising around in New York, Boston and Toronto and whose proposed stadium he is already discussing as a venue for sporting and non-sporting events beyond regular-season baseball.<\/p>\n

Rob Higgins<\/a> worked alongside Corrada on major-event bids while leading the Tampa Bay Sports Commission<\/a> before becoming CEO of USF Athletics, giving him a view of the tourism-sports relationship from both sides.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo matter the responsibility, Santiago has always led by putting our hometown\u2019s best interests first, which has resulted in invaluable impact of all shapes and sizes for our community over the years,\u201d Higgins told TBBW.<\/p>\n

By Corrada\u2019s calculation, close to 60% of Hillsborough\u2019s tourist-tax collections currently supports professional sports facilities, amateur athletic complexes, the Tampa Bay Sports Commission, sporting-event incentives and other sports-related uses, with the sixth cent scheduled to join that pool after the coming fiscal year.<\/p>\n

During the county\u2019s Rays deliberations, Commissioner Gwen Myers called Hillsborough County Hotel and Lodging Association President Bob Morrison back to the microphone and asked him to repeat what he had said about protecting Visit Tampa Bay before commissioners acted on the stadium agreements.<\/p>\n

Morrison called Visit Tampa Bay the \u201cengine that drives the revenue\u201d behind the tourist-development-tax fund, while Myers told county staff she wanted the organization protected from layoffs even as she argued for the longer-term economic benefits of bringing the Rays to Tampa.<\/p>\n

Visit Tampa Bay raises roughly $2.7 million a year in private revenue and works with more than 1,000 partners, including hotels, Manthey Hospitality, the 1905 Family of Restaurants and many others that contribute rooms, venues, discounts, services or money to help land and host business, providing resources outside the county allocation but nowhere near another $13 million revenue stream.<\/p>\n

Andrea Gonzmart Williams<\/a> of the 1905 Family of Restaurants has seen the other side of those partnerships inside her restaurants, where she said Visit Tampa Bay\u2019s work has brought her into contact with visitors from around the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cGetting to work with Visit Tampa Bay on projects is always a fun, fast-paced experience. Having the opportunity to help share what our city has to offer through videos and interviews is one of my favorite parts of my job,\u201d Gonzmart Williams told TBBW. I have had the opportunity to meet so many individuals in my restaurants from all over the world because VTB has brought them to Tampa. Santiago and his team are truly a Tampa treasure and embody everything our city represents.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThose folks are always there with us,\u201d Corrada said, adding that trying to replace a major public-funding loss by returning to businesses already contributing to Visit Tampa Bay\u2019s events would amount to \u201cdouble, triple dipping on some of these folks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Visit Tampa Bay can keep selling Tampa Bay, recruiting partners and booking conventions years ahead, but after 13 years of growing the hotel business behind the tourist tax, Corrada enters the next county budget cycle without control over how much of that revenue commissioners return to his organization.<\/p>\n

Strangers now stop Corrada at the airport, recognize him as Santiago and thank him for Tampa Bay\u2019s rise; encounters he says usually end with him redirecting the praise toward the staff and partners whose work produced the numbers attached to his tenure.<\/p>\n

\u201cSantiago doesn\u2019t do this by himself; he could never do it by himself,\u201d Corrada said. \u201cI get to talk about and brag about the great work that they do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same Corrada who once dropped into the splits at an Edison pep rally still lets his staff put him into the show, including a recent America 250 event where an unmeasured jacket lasted about 10 seconds before he pulled it off in front of the crowd.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought the buttons were going to pop out and kill some of y\u2019all in the audience,\u201d Corrada said.<\/p>\n

\"SantiagoVisit Tampa Bay President and CEO Santiago Corrada waves an American flag onstage during an event.<\/p>\n

Near the end of an interview about the Rays and Visit Tampa Bay\u2019s future, Corrada said he had nothing else to add, then stopped himself with \u201cone last thing\u201d and returned, unprompted, to the sixth cent.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s important that businesses and residents understand the improvements to our county that have resulted from the efforts of the hospitality industry,\u201d Corrada explained. \u201cFrom MICHELIN-starred restaurants to stadiums, culture and attractions, we are very proud to have led and fought for those victories.\u201d<\/p>\n

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