Virginia touts another dumb state taxpayer-funded tourism program

States like to brag about their tourism economies, like Virginia does, when it touts its record-high $36.2 billion in visitor spending in 2025.

What Virginia Tourism doesn’t tell you when they’re pushing these numbers out: 33 percent of the visitor spending in Virginia is us Virginians visiting other parts of the state, either for day trips or overnight stays.

I’m going to start bringing that up going forward every time we write about the latest expenditure of state tax dollars on the tourism industry – more than a fourth of which is us spending money to convince ourselves to visit us.

The release from the governor’s office today actually involves a relatively tiny amount – $205,300 in matching grant funds that will be awarded to 46 tourism marketing programs through something called the Microbusiness Marketing Leverage Program, which the release tells us will go to “support small businesses, downtown business associations, and chambers of commerce in attracting visitors and increasing spending during the tourism off-season,” which is another word for, winter.

“Virginia’s tourism industry is driven by the small businesses, local attractions, and welcoming communities that make our home such an incredible place to visit,” Gov. Abigail Spanberger said, in a statement highlighted in the release.

“I’m proud to help support these communities by making sure they have the resources to thrive even during slower months,” Spanberger said. Thank you to the men and women across Virginia who power this industry and make our Commonwealth a destination for visitors across the globe.”

This isn’t a knock on Spanberger; every governor that I’ve covered over the past 30 years has been asked to contribute similar dumb quotes for releases putting over our tourism industry, and what we, the taxpayers, do to prop it up.

The grants announced today, the release tells us, will be matched by more than $273,130 in funding by local partners, generating more than $478,400 in total marketing activity.

Go ahead and figure that in the range of $160,000 of that will have been money that we spent to tell ourselves to go somewhere else in Virginia for a day or two.