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What they can say is it will take much more than they have now.
Officials from the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce made that case Friday in two separate meetings, one with Town Council members and business leaders and another with the editorial board of The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette.
The chamber is pushing a bill that would allow Beaufort County municipalities to impose a sales tax of up to 1 percentage point to pay for tourism marketing and tourism-related capital projects.
Town Council members, however, recently have said they are concerned about the chamber's repeated requests for more public money in addition to the more than $1 million a year it already gets by law as the town's designated marketing organization.
In the most recent case Tuesday, the council approved a chamber request for a $300,000 special allocation from a reserve fund set up so the town can market itself after a disaster. Council members cited the recession as a grave-enough emergency to justify using the money.
The chamber's Visitor & Convention Bureau gets about 72 percent of its $3.59 million annual budget from public sources.
Chamber officials say they are in the lower third of Southeastern destinations when ranked by spending per lodging unit.
Other destinations have come to understand the need to keep pace in an escalating advertising race, said David Tigges, chairman of the chamber's board and CEO of the McNair Law Firm.
"Hilton Head has competition like it's never had before because everybody else gets" the importance of marketing, Tigges said.
Tigges helped write the sales-tax bill, which is patterned after a similar measure passed last year for the Myrtle Beach area.
Thanks in part to that bill, tourism promoters there now spend as much as $20 million per year, Hilton Head chamber officials say.
Although chamber officials said they want Hilton Head to remain different from Myrtle Beach, they said local officials must spend more if they want to lure travelers from newer resorts on the Grand Strand.
WHAT THE BILL WOULD DO
The Beaufort County bill would allow the Town of Hilton Head Island to increase the sales-tax rate there from 7 to 8 percent on most items for as long as 10 years. Exceptions would include groceries, gasoline, prescription medication and Internet sales.
The chamber estimates the measure would generate an additional $8.9 million on Hilton Head, at least half of which would go to tourism marketing.
The bill also allows for property tax relief, which supporters say would offset the cost of the sales tax increase for property owners.
Some have objected to the prospect of the town levying a tax increase during a slow economy, but chamber officials said amending the bill to allow a binding vote on a tax increase could keep the legislation from passing this year.
Mayor Tom Peeples, who originally suggested deleting language allowing a referendum from the Beaufort County version of the Myrtle Beach bill, has since said he would be open to a non-binding referendum.
Even without a referendum, the issue likely would be scrutinized because of mayoral and Town Council elections this year, Tigges said.
Council member George Williams said his constituents were upset when they learned chamber president and CEO Bill Miles was paid $344,251 in the fiscal year ending June 30.
That's up $28,624 -- or more than 9 percent -- from his compensation of $315,627 the previous year.
Tigges said Miles received a $25,000 performance bonus in September 2008, which Tigges said was before the depths of the downturn became apparent.
Miles then turned down a bonus and raise in September 2009, Tigges said.
THE BEST OPTION?
Council member John Safay asked whether chamber officials have investigated all other ways to raise money.
Tigges said the chamber sought the sales tax option mostly because officials were confident it would pass in the legislature.
The town spends some of the tax revenues generated from tourists on public safety and other services, but it would likely be difficult for the town to adjust those commitments, visitor bureau vice president Susan Thomas said.
"The town has become dependent on those funds," she said. "To extricate them from that would be very complex."
If government invests more heavily in tourism, chamber officials said, businesses might be more willing to follow its lead and upgrade the island's aging accommodations.
"The private money follows the public commitment," Tigges said.
Although town officials have increasingly talked about the need to diversify the island's economy, Tigges said he thought tourism was likely to remain its driving force.
"Where's the next generations of retirees coming from?" he asked.
Boosting the chamber's coffers for tourism marketing could also create jobs, build new revenues for the town and help pay for beach renourishment that might otherwise require future tax increases, chamber officials said.
The sales tax could also free up more of the town's accommodations tax revenues for local arts and cultural groups, Tigges said. The chamber often applies for supplemental grants from those revenues in addition to its statutory allocation.
The bill -- sponsored by Reps. Bill Herbkersman, R-Bluffton, and Richard Chalk, R-Hilton Head Island -- has passed the House and been referred to the Senate Finance Committee.
