Orlando’s mayor has spoken about the importance of tourism to the theme park capital’s economy, making the city its own brand with attractions feeding back into its economy.

In an exclusive interview with Attractions Management, Buddy Dyer – who has been re-elected as mayor four times since 2003 – spoke about how Orlando works with its major theme park operators and how that supports the city’s wider development and growth.

“Tourism is the single most important piece of our economic pie, with one in every three jobs touched by our tourism community,” said Dyer.

“You can go anywhere in the world and people will know Orlando. In its own right, it’s a fantastic brand name and that brand is so good because of tourism.”

In 2016, Orlando welcomed a record 66 million visitors, making it the most-visited destination in the US. Of those visitors, 5.5 million were international and 60.5 million were domestic travellers. The volume of visitors has been driven largely by the area’s theme parks, with Orlando boasting six of the 10 most visited parks in the world.

“The market continues to increase in volume and our attractions continue to add to, and renew their offering,” said Dyer. “What they’re in the business of now is not finding the first-time visitor, but bringing back returning tourists.”

Dyer praised major operators such as Disney and Universal, calling them excellent “corporate citizens”, with taxes helping to generate new revenue sources for Orlando.

“Universal is the largest employer and largest taxpayer within the city limits of Orlando, and Disney is the largest single-site employer in the country,” he said.

“I’m interacting with them on a daily basis on things that involve the greater community or the greater region – one, for instance, being the tourist development tax.”

The tax, which applies to all of Orange County, Florida, is a bed tax charged at US$0.06 (€0.05, £0.04) for every dollar earned. That tax generates around US$260m (€221.4m, £194.6m) a year for Orlando.

When the city built its three new venues in the Downtown area – the performing arts centre, the Amway Centre and the Camping World Stadium – about half of the US$1.2bn (€1bn, £898m) capital investment was generated through the tourism development tax.

The area is currently developing US$10bn (€8.51bn, £7.48bn) of transport infrastructure in an attempt to boost transport links domestically and in the city itself – including the redevelopment of Florida highway the I4, the Beltway around Orlando, and an expansion of the SunRail system, which runs from Miami through to Orlando International Airport.

“We continue to improve our tourism infrastructure, which in turn benefits Orlando even more,” said Dyer. “The tourism community has been extremely good to us in terms of supporting community assets. Tourism doesn’t just support tourism, it supports everything.”

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