Funding tourism returns six dollars for every dollar invested in marketing. Those figures were given to the Oneida County Board Tuesday by a regional Department of Tourism specialist.
Jeff Anderson reported all sections of the state grew in tourist activity in 2014, including the Northwoods where both Oneida and Vilas counties rank among the top 16 counties in the state in tourism spending.
But Anderson reminded supervisors that those tourist dollars spent turn around to tax dollars for local units of government. $1.4 billion was generated in tourist-related tax dollars statewide in 2014...
"....to put that into the household level, we talk about billions and millions of dollars, if we're to remove the tourism industry from the state of Wisconsin, each household would have to pay about $620 more to maintain the same level of service we offer currently..."
Anderson says tourism has grown to a "need to have" part of the economy as opposed to being "nice to have". Tourism employs more than 187,000 statewide or about one out of every 13 jobs in the state.
He encouraged the Oneida county board to continue to put dollars toward promoting tourism with a strong return in investment expected.
