THE HOBNOB-DESTIN NEWS

1 October, 2010             Destin’s Hippest News Source

September 29, 2010 11:15 PM

Okaloosa County’s Tourist Development Council is working to restart its short-lived debit card program.

“We’re shooting for the middle of next week (to restart the program),” said Mark Bellinger, the TDC’s executive director. “We have to get the information out to all the lodging partners again who signed up for this, let them know exactly what’s going on again for instructions, let them know exactly how many cards we have left and what’s going on the website.”

The TDC’s Emerald Money Debit program is designed to provide tourists or locals a $200 debit card for purchases in Okaloosa County if they book at least a two-night stay at a lodging that collects local bed taxes.

The program was scheduled to run from Sept. 17 to Oct. 31, or until 5,000 available debit cards had been taken. But it was canceled after just two days when it was discovered that many businesses were trying to cheat the system.

Plans had called for participating hotels and condominiums to forward the qualifying reservations to the TDC for approval. Bellinger now is working with website developers to add a link to the TDC site where tourists or locals who make reservations can submit their date to the TDC themselves to reserve a debit card.

Bellinger hopes to have the website completed today so he can announce to the 189 participating lodging partners that the program is returning.

If the program is restarted next week, Bellinger said the deadline will likely be extended so people making reservations for early November could also qualify for a debit card if they make their reservation soon enough.

Of the 5,000 debit cards printed for the program, 576 already have been given out and about 645 have been reserved from the two days the promotion ran earlier this month. That leaves nearly 3,800 cards to give out.

“We’re still going to reserve all the cards, I think in a week, week-and-a-half,” Bellinger said. “It’s going to go really quick.”

The Emerald Money Debit program was funded through Okaloosa’s portion of a $7 million grant BP provided to the seven coastal counties in Northwest Florida to help bring tourists to the area after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Dusty Ricketts, Florida Freedom Newspapers