The Greater Tallahassee Area Chamber of Commerce wrapped up its annual retreat at Amelia Island this past weekend. One item on the Chamber's agenda is greater support for local efforts to promote special events and other attractions that bring in visitors.
Chamber President and CEO Michael Dalby says Tallahassee has surprisingly robust visitation, considering the town lacks attractions such as beaches and theme parks.
"Just in 2025, there were 2.6 million visitors that came to our community, you realize that as a state capital that draws a lot of attention to our community and draws a lot of people coming here."
The county's Office of Economic Vitality says that visitor figure was up more than five percent from the previous year. And those visitors shelled ou t almost $900 million in direct spending with a total economic impact of $1.3 BILLION.
That's without some big, new events that came to Tallahassee this year.
"Well we certainly noticed from hosting the Savannah Bananas and the professional bull riding that brought a huge crowd to Tallahassee. And oftentimes people who'd never been to Tallahassee before or even knew about our community so it was a combination of the economic impact and being able to get eyes on Tallahassee and realize this is a great community and a great place."
Not to mention what happened in February to bring in more than 10,000 spectators to see athletes from 50 countries.
"Tallahassee did a tremendous job in bringing the World Cross-Country Championship and I know they're trying to do that again, to bring them back here. Maybe even on a permanent basis. That would be amazing!"
Dalby thinks the same forces that brought the championship to Tallahassee might be leveraged to attract other big happenings.
"When we have an opportunity to get these major events into our community, we need to do a little bit of rolling out the red carpet in showing them that we would like them to be here, because we recognize that they are a big benefit to our own citizens, but also to the entire region around the Capital Region."
Not to mention the 1,100 Chamber members, many of which benefit from visitor spending. So Dalby is advancing the idea of perhaps a private-public partnership to beef up event recruitment and retention efforts.
"There are things that those events need to help them with the management overall and to be able to put a few dollars towards helping them to defray some of those expenses that may be incurred. That would encourage those events, those major events, to say, 'Yes! Tallahassee is where we'd like to come.' We're all in favor of that and we'd certainly support that effort."
This is just one of the ideas the Chamber is ready to roll out following a very eventful retreat at Amelia Island.
