The Lodging Tax Is Not a Subscription Service

And Other Tourism Myths We Need to Retire

Mercury must be in Gatorade. 😏

I know this because somewhere in America this week, a hotelier looked at a DMO and said:

“Well… you work for us. We pay the tax.”

And every tourism professional within a 50-mile radius slowly rubbed their temples.

Let’s clear something up, because this misunderstanding shows up in tourism about once a quarter and it never stops being weird.

First: That Tax Isn’t Your Tax

You didn’t pay it.

The visitor paid it.

Hotels collect lodging tax the same way stores collect sales tax. You pass it along to the government.

That government then decides how much of that funding supports destination marketing.

So the money trail looks like this:

Visitor → tax → government → destination marketing.

Not:

Hotel → DMO → personal marketing concierge.

If that were the system, DMOs would spend their entire day running individual ad campaigns for whoever emailed them last.

“Promote my steakhouse!” “No, my brewery!” “What about my alpaca farm wedding venue!”

Tourism strategy would look like a middle school group project.

Second: DMOs Don’t Work For Businesses

They work for the destination.

Which means juggling:

• hotels • restaurants • attractions • hosts • tour operators • event organizers • residents • elected officials • and 7,000 businesses who would all like to be in the visitor guide

All at the same time.

It's stakeholder salad, and it's never pretty or neat.

Third: Stakeholder Does Not Mean Boss

Everyone in tourism is important.

Hotels matter. Restaurants matter. Attractions matter. Hosts matter. Transportation matters.

But the DMO’s job is to grow the entire visitor economy, not just one business category.

• Sometimes that means your business isn’t the star of the campaign.

• Sometimes that means the strategy is bigger than your marketing calendar.

• Sometimes that means the answer is simply… not this time.

And that’s okay.

Because destination marketing only works when someone is looking at the whole board, not just their square on the Monopoly map.

Now let me throw another Jenga on it

This misunderstanding does something else that rarely gets talked about.

It makes the job inside a DMO… exhausting.

Most tourism professionals take these jobs because they love places.

They love telling the story of a region. They love supporting local businesses. They love building something that lifts the whole community.

....Then they discover the politics.

Not just city hall politics.

Stakeholder politics.

The angry emails. The “why wasn’t my business included” phone calls. The assumption that public funding means personal service.

And suddenly the job isn’t strategy anymore.

It’s diplomacy.

It’s conflict management.

It’s explaining the same basic funding model for the fifteenth time this month.

Then we all act surprised when talented people quietly leave the industry.

To be clear: most tourism partners are fantastic.

They collaborate. They show up. They help build the destination.

But every once in a while…

It pops up like whack-a-mole.

And someone decides the DMO is their employee.

The lodging tax is not a subscription service.

And the sooner we retire that myth, the better tourism works for everyone.

I’m Jenn Barbee, reminding you that collecting a tax and running a tourism strategy are two very different jobs.