Pensacola's Tourism Marketing Crisis

Rick Outzen: (we don’t) color on the dog · Jun 3, 2025 · 12m

Host Rick Outzen interviews Tourist Development Council Chairman David Bear about a growing crisis affecting Pensacola's tourism industry.

With over $2.5 million in tourism marketing bills going unpaid and the visitor center's utilities unpaid, the county's tourism promotion efforts have ground to a halt.

Bear explains how the clerk of court's ever-changing and unpublished rules for approving tourist development tax expenditures have created bureaucratic gridlock, forcing one advertising agency to front over $1 million of their own money while waiting for reimbursement.

With tourism marketing…