A new audit report from the Orange County Comptroller’s Office finds that the tourism board Visit Orlando, the area’s travel marketing agency, spent $75,000 in taxpayer dollars on a lavish dinner getaway up in New York City, ostensibly to “promote” the Central Florida dining scene.
The dinner, hosted at New York restaurant The Musket Room, took place in May 2023, according to a blog post published by the Michelin Guide. Forty guests, including Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, were invited to attend a dinner featuring chefs from Capa, a Michelin-starred steakhouse located in the Disney-adjacent Four Seasons hotel.
“The reason for the dinner was to celebrate all that Orlando has to offer — in addition to a certain theme park — with haute edge,” the Michelin Guide review reads.
Visit Orlando, the county’s official destination marketing organization, is largely government-funded, despite being a private agency. The organization claimed that the NYC dinner generated $5.7 million in economic return or “media value” for Orange County, noting NYC is the “No. 1 media market in the country” and pointing to foodie articles published after the dinner as examples. County auditors, however, question the private agency’s logic.
“It’s questionable, at best, to say that dinner generated $5 million,” Orange County comptroller Phil Diamond told Orlando Weekly, candidly. “The $75,000 they spent for this event was taxpayer dollars, not private,” he underscored. “This was money that could have been spent for other purposes.”
It’s just one example of questionable spending recently flagged by Diamond’s team in a 66-page audit report published by the Comptroller’s Office Tuesday.
From January to December 2023, Diamond’s team of auditors also found that Visit Orlando spent thousands of taxpayer dollars on orange Vans sneakers and Christmas sweaters for a cheesy Barbie-themed Christmas greeting video, earmarked $12,000 for a car allowance for its CEO, and spent thousands of public dollars on office decor and design, in what auditors believe to be a violation of the organization’s agreement with Orange County.
Under a 2019 tourism promotion agreement, public funds received by Visit Orlando under that contract must be used to “directly support County tourism promotion,” according to auditors — not executive perks or holiday costumes.
While Visit Orlando is not a public entity, the vast majority of its funding — roughly 92 percent — comes from tourist development tax funds raised through a 6 percent tax levied on hotel and short-term rental stays. According to the audit report, Visit Orlando received $114 million in public TDT funds in 2023 alone.
Where this audit came from
Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings and county commissioners asked the Comptroller’s Office last year to audit the county’s multimillion-dollar contract with VisitOrlando. An interim memo, outlining auditors’ findings, was released in August.
The final report published Tuesday revealed multiple “compliance” issues, according to Diamond, including Visit Orlando’s use of public funds for ineligible expenses, lobbying the state Legislature without getting county approval, “inadequate” monitoring of contract compliance on the part of the county, and Visit Orlando’s misclassification of public funds.
“One of the most significant findings that we had was that they had misclassified about $3.5 million of public money as private money, and that was just for 2023,” Diamond told Orlando Weekly. Why that’s important, he explained, “is that public money has to be accounted for — it has to be transparent.”
Private funds, on the other hand, are quite frankly private and aren’t restricted to specific, allowable uses outlined in Visit Orlando’s agreement with the county.
“We have no objection to them spending private money for private purposes, but … you shouldn’t be using public money from the taxpayers for private purposes,” Diamond argued. Or, potentially, for private gain.
According to the new report, Visit Orlando has received more than $100 million annually in public TDT funds since 2022, again making up the bulk of their total revenue. Although Visit Orlando does earn revenue from membership fees, advertising revenue, interest earnings and the like, that makes up less than 10 percent of their total revenue.
Tourism is Orange County’s dominant economic sector, as the home of the world-famous Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando and SeaWorld. According to Visit Orlando, the city welcomed more than 75 million visitors last year, a nearly 2 percent increase from 2023 visitation numbers. Orlando’s tourism industry — bolstered by its tourist attractions and major theme parks — altogether contributes an estimated $5.6 billion in local and state tax revenue.
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According to Diamond, county management has been “much more positive” in their response to the audit findings (compared to Visit Orlando) concurring with all of the audit team’s recommendations for ensuring stronger contract compliance.
Such recommendations include dedicating a staff member to monitoring compliance (this wasn’t the case before), developing set procedures for that dedicated employee to follow, and commissioning an independent and unbiased return-on-investment assessment to evaluate how well Visit Orlando is actually doing its singular job of drawing in tourists to the region.
County auditors found that Visit Orlando had failed to account for their actual investment — the amount they were paying — in their own ROI calculations. “If they’re spending money, taxpayers deserve to know if they’re effective,” said Diamond. “I don’t see how you can do an ROI calculation without the ‘I.’”
Visit Orlando, he admitted, has had a “mixed” reaction to audit findings. The organization “did not concur” with several of the auditing team’s recommendations, per the report, including the adoption of a standardized methodology for calculating ROI and ensuring they obtain county approval for discussions with state legislators that “could be perceived” as lobbying.
“While we appreciate and generally support many of the recommendations aimed at further enhancing our practices, we would like to express some reservations regarding certain findings,” wrote Visit Orlando president and CEO Casandra Matej in a July 28 response to audit findings.
Throughout the audit process, Matej said her organization sought to make “every effort” to provide “thorough information,” including explanations of “unique aspects” of their business operations and “the specific terms of our contractual obligations.”
“Despite the collaborative spirit of this process,” she continued, “a few of the findings may stem from differing interpretations of Visit Orlando’s role as a private, nonprofit destination marketing organization, which differs in some important respects from a county agency.”
Visit Orlando is similar to, but exists as a separate entity from the organization Visit Florida, a statewide nonprofit created as public-private partnership by the Florida Legislature in 1996.
Despite the audit’s findings — which include inadequate monitoring by Orange County of Visit Orlando’s contract compliance — Diamond told Orlando Weekly he’s not concerned by what Florida’s new Department of Government Efficiency task force might find when they visit the county for an audit next week.
“We’ve done our audits,” said Diamond (more than 500 of them, actually, per his count). “The audits are all public record.” He’s not sure what DOGE “is interested in,” nor does he know what kinds of resources or experience with auditing they have.
“But, you know, it is the law that they can do this,” he said. “So any records we have that are responsive, we’re going to provide.”
This post has been updated to clarify that Visit Orlando is a separate entity from Visit Florida. A previous version incorrectly stated that Visit Orlando was “part of” Visit Florida.
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This article appears in Jul 30 – Aug 5, 2025.