Arlington Economic Development is pursuing new options to market the county as a travel destination after the county attorney’s office halted its original plans.
At issue is whether Arlington County could use a 2021 state law to set up a tourism improvement district, or TID, to fund promotional efforts on behalf of the county’s hospitality industry. The county currently pursues such efforts in-house through the Arlington Convention and Visitors Service.
Economic development staff were well on their way to finalizing a plan for a TID when the county attorney’s office stepped in. Attorneys said that Arlington officials would be exceeding their authority by having a degree of government control over the TID process.
State law, county attorneys said, requires this to be an entirely industry-led effort.
“There has to be a firewall,” Arlington Economic Development director Ryan Touhill told members of the Economic Development Commission on Oct. 14. “There can’t be any influence or control by the county government on the TID.”
He called it a “very unfortunate” legal determination but apparently the final say on the matter.
“We’ve exhausted all discussions” with the county attorney’s office, Touhill said.
As a response, economic-development staff laid out three possible scenarios in moving forward:
- Seek General Assembly action to amend the existing TID legislation, providing the type of flexibility Arlington is seeking
- Increase the existing hotel tax and dedicate some of the additional revenue toward augmenting tourism-promotion efforts
- Spin off government tourism-promotion efforts to a nonprofit organization, as is the case in some other Northern Virginia localities
After discussions with leaders of the county’s hotel industry, increasing the hotel tax has effectively been ruled out as a viable option. County staff will move forward on the other two possibilities to see if either gains traction.
Touhill wouldn’t offer any odds on how successful the county would be in getting state law amended to support the first option, except to say “there’s no guarantee” in going to Richmond on any issue.
Setting up a nonprofit organization to run tourism promotion can be done, but would likely be a one-year to two-year process, he said.
During discussion, Economic Development Commission chair Kevin Yam circled back on the middle option — raising the hotel tax — and why it was taken off the table.
“It sounds like there’s pushback on [that] scenario. Is that because industry partners wouldn’t benefit 100 cents on the dollar?” Yam asked.
“Yes, and they saw it as them having complete control over how that [TID] money is spent versus the tax, over which they have virtually no control,” said Emily Cassell, director of the Arlington Convention and Visitors Service.
Kate Bates, president/CEO of the Arlington Chamber of Commerce, agreed with that assessment.
“From the hoteliers’ perspective, it’s control” of the funding decisions that’s paramount, she said.
Like Touhill, Bates said the ruling by the county attorney was “a surprise this late in the game” but suggested the alternatives laid out by Touhill might work.
She didn’t want to see both a government-run tourism effort and a nonprofit body doing essentially the same thing.
“No one wants to have two different Arlington tourism organizations. That isn’t in anybody’s best interest,” Bates said.
At the Oct. 14 meeting, Touhill said county staff had not begun drafting potential legislation on the issue for the 2026 General Assembly session, which begins in mid-January.
The County Board officially weighed in on the matter, but revising state law to provide more flexibility on tourism districts is included in a draft public-policy package now out for public review. Final decisions on the county’s priorities for the 2026 General Assembly session will be made in mid-November.
