Did you ever wonder how our tourism tax dollars are spent? 

The Myrtle Beach area is one of the nation’s busiest tourist destinations with over 18 million visitors coming to the Grand Strand in 2016. Those tourists stay in our hotels and beach houses, eat at our restaurants, shop in our stores, and spend money at golf courses, attractions and more. Every purchase our tourists make are taxed. In fact, in 2016, tourists paid almost $323 million in taxes. Did you ever wonder how those taxes are spent? Watch the video to learn more.

For every $12 of taxes paid by tourists, $1 is re-invested in tourism promotion.

Here’s how the tax dollars were used in 2016:

• $158 million went towards education
• $94 million went towards local infrastructure
• $30 million went into the general fund of local governments
• $11 million went towards public safety
• $3 million went towards property tax reduction in the city of Myrtle Beach
• $27 million paid by tourists was reinvested into growing tourism

The tourists pay for services that would otherwise be paid by us. The more we grow tourism, the more tourism works for us.

To learn more about how tourism works for us, visit TourismWorksForUs.com.