Lt. Governor Jay Dardenne: State Tourism Is Big Business

Tourism was the subject of a morning news conference at the Shreveport Convention Center, where Travel South USA is holding its domestic showcase trade show through March 25, 2015.

Lt. Governor Jay Dardenne joined Shreveport Mayor Ollie Tyler, Bossier City Mayor Lo Walker and Stacy Brown with the Shreveport-Bossier Convention and Tourist Bureau to talk about what this conference means to our area. He also discussed the state budget and how it affects his office's efforts to promote tourism in Louisiana.

"Tourism is funded entirely at a state level with 3/100 of a penny of sales tax. There is no state general fund beyond that amount of money. Usually it generates anywhere from $22- to $23-million a year," Dardenne said. "In the past years during this administration, a lot of that money has been peeled off and used for other purposes, and we've argued that that ought not be the case."

Dardenne said that will be a big topic of discussion during the April legislative session. He'll be releasing tourism numbers for 2014 on April 1.

Check out video from this morning's news conference: