By the Everything-PR Research Team  |  Published on Everything-PR.com

For the first time, a consolidated industry-focused analysis of how state tourism offices, city destination marketing organizations, state departments of transportation, state health departments, and state economic development authorities contract with U.S. public relations, advertising, and communications firms. Drawing on U.S. Travel Association budget data, state procurement records, NHTSA media disclosures, and city-level DMO reporting, this study provides a structured picture of a public-sector PR market that is larger, more concentrated, and more publicly disclosed than most commercial industry benchmarks recognize.

Key Statistics and Takeaways

Why this study exists

Every state comptroller can tell you what the state spent on highway construction last year. Most can tell you what the state spent on its Medicaid program to the nearest million. But ask what a state actually spent on public relations, advertising, strategic communications, and destination marketing — across all agencies, pass-through grants, quasi-governmental authorities, and municipal subdivisions — and the number is almost always unknown.

Unlike federal PR spending, where USAspending.gov and GSA Schedule data produce a traceable trail, stateand municipal PR procurement is fragmented across roughly 50 state purchasing systems, hundreds of independent city procurement portals, quasi-governmental destination marketing organizations funded by bed-tax revenue (not general funds), and economic development authorities structured as 501(c) nonprofits outside standard state budget disclosure.

The data is public, but scattered across so many systems that no standard commercial industry benchmark systematically aggregates it. This study is an attempt to change that — drawing on the U.S. Travel Association State Tourism Office Budget Dashboard, state comptroller records, city-level DMO annual reports, NHTSA media buy disclosures, state-agency vendor databases, and GovWin IQ contract tracking — to produce a structured picture of where the money actually goes.

“A single city destination marketing organization — the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority — spends more annually on marketing than the combined tourism budgets of more than 40 state tourism offices. The U.S. municipal and state PR market is both larger and more concentrated than standard commercial benchmarks capture.”

Methodology & data sources

This study draws on five independent data sources, triangulated to produce segment-level, state-level, and city-level estimates:

U.S. Travel Association State Tourism Office Budget Dashboard: An annual survey of all 50 state tourism offices and territories, capturing total funding, marketing and promotion budgets, other revenue, funding sources, and staffing. The FY 2024–25 dashboard provides the most comprehensive aggregate view of state-level destination marketing spend in the United States.

State comptroller and procurement records: Most states publish at least partial vendor-level contract disclosure through comptroller transparency portals (Texas Open Data, New York Open Book, California StateController, Florida Transparency Florida, etc.). Individual PR and advertising contracts can be identified by NAICS code 541820 (public relations agencies), 541810 (advertising agencies), and 541613 (marketing consulting services).

City DMO annual reports and bed-tax disclosures: Municipal destination marketing organizations — Las Vegas CVA, NYC Tourism + Conventions, LA Tourism, Choose Chicago, Visit Philadelphia, Visit Orlando, Visit Dallas, Visit Houston, Visit San Antonio — publish annual reports with marketing and sales budgets. Bed-tax revenue allocations are disclosed in state and county finance records.

NHTSA Traffic Safety Marketing media buy disclosures: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration publishes media work plans and media buy summaries for national campaigns (Click It or Ticket, Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over, U Drive. U Text. U Pay., Child Passenger Safety Week). State DOT and State Highway Safety Office paid-media totals are disclosed alongside federal buys.

GovWin IQ and Find RFP contract trackers: Commercial databases of published government RFPs, RFIs, and awarded contracts, which enable activity-level tracking of state and municipal PR procurement cycles. GovWin IQ tracked 677 active U.S. and Canadian governmental public relations services contracts as of this study’s reporting period.

A note on limitations: this study captures disclosed procurement. In-house communications staffing (press secretaries, public information officers, agency communications directors, social media managers) is excluded. Informal and no-bid contracts below state-specific procurement thresholds are excluded. Charitable or foundation-funded public affairs work adjacent to state and municipal priorities is excluded. The figures represent a disclosed floor, not a ceiling, of actual public-sector PR spend.

The benchmark: what the data actually shows

Based on the triangulated dataset, the U.S. municipal and state PR market is defined by four structural features:

1. Tourism dominates the disclosed spend. State tourism offices and municipal destination marketing organizations are, by a significant margin, the largest category of disclosed state and municipal PR and marketing procurement in the United States. State tourism office marketing and promotion budgets alone exceeded $668 million in aggregate in FY 2017–18 (U.S. Travel Association) and have grown materially since, particularly during and after the American Rescue Plan Act supplemental funding cycle. Visit California’s FY 2023–24 marketing budget of $180 million alone equals more than a quarter of the historical 50-state aggregate.
2. City DMOs dwarf most state DMOs. The conventional assumption that state tourism offices are the largest destination marketing spenders is incorrect. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority approved a $460 million total budget for FY 2026, including $168 million for marketing and sales — a single city DMO outspending the state of Hawaii’s entire Tourism Authority ($63M) by nearly 3x on marketing alone. Similar dynamics exist in New York City (NYC Tourism + Conventions), Orlando, Los Angeles, Dallas–Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, Philadelphia, and Miami.
3. Public safety campaigns are a recurring, high-volume media buyer. NHTSA-coordinated high-visibility enforcement campaigns produce predictable, multi-million-dollar paid media cycles. State DOTs and StateHighway Safety Offices spent approximately $17 million on paid media for one Click It or Ticket May mobilization alone in a recent comparable year, against roughly $9.7 million in parallel federal NHTSA paid media. Multiple such cycles run per year — Click It or Ticket (May and November), Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over (December and Labor Day), Distracted Driving (April), Motorcycle Safety (May), and Child Passenger Safety (September) — producing a structurally recurring state-level public safety advertising market.
4. Non-tourism, non-safety state spend is fragmented across agencies. State health departments, economic development authorities, lottery commissions, state universities and university systems, stateinsurance marketplaces, and state attorneys general all contract with outside PR and advertising firms. Aggregate disclosed spend at the state-agency level is not systematically tracked, but single-firm contract data gives an indication of scale: a single Indiana agency-of-record relationship placed $6.7 million in paid media for Indiana state agencies in one recent year.

State tourism office marketing budgets — top spenders

Source: Everything-PR Research Team analysis of U.S. Travel Association State Tourism Office Budget Dashboard (FY 2024–25), state tourism office annual reports, and state appropriations records.

City destination marketing organizations — the larger buyers

Source: Everything-PR Research Team analysis of city DMO annual reports and county/municipal bed-tax disclosures. Non-Las Vegas budgets are estimates based on recent annual reports and industry reporting.

Procurement tier benchmarks: how state and municipal PR contracts are structured

Tier 4 — Small-dollar project contracts

$25K–$250K per contract

Single-project or single-event engagements. Common for county-level DMOs, smaller state agencies, and event-specific comms (county fairs, regional festivals, single legislative initiatives). Awarded through informal procurement or small-purchase thresholds below the state’s formal RFP requirement.

Tier 3 — Agency-of-record and annual retainers

$250K–$2M annually

Year-long or multi-year engagements for mid-sized state agencies, state lotteries, state health departments, smaller state tourism offices, regional tourism boards, and mid-size municipal DMOs. Typically awarded through formal state RFP processes with 3–5 year terms.

Tier 2 — Major state agency and large-city DMO contracts

$2M–$15M annually

Agency-of-record relationships with large state departments (health, transportation, commerce, economic development), large state universities, and second-tier city DMOs. Integrated creative, paid media, digital, and PR services. Typically structured as multi-year with annual media budgets disclosed separately from agency fees.

Tier 1 — Major state tourism offices and top-tier city DMOs

$15M–$100M+ annually

Visit California, Visit Florida, Hawaii Tourism Authority, Pennsylvania Tourism Office, Las Vegas CVA, Visit Orlando, NYC Tourism + Conventions, LA Tourism, and peer organizations. Multiple concurrent agency partners — typically a separate creative/AOR agency, a separate media agency, separate digital and PR specialists, and often international-market specialist shops. Contract cycles are publicly announced and aggressively competed.

Beyond tourism: state and municipal PR categories with recurring spend

While tourism and destination marketing dominate the largest individual contracts, recurring state and municipal PR procurement occurs across a broad range of categories:

• State Departments of Transportation — public safety campaigns (seat belt, impaired driving, distracted driving, motorcycle safety), infrastructure project communications (bridge projects, toll road introductions), and driver licensing modernization campaigns
• State Departments of Health — vaccine communications, public health initiatives (tobacco cessation, opioid response, maternal health), Medicaid enrollment outreach, and state insurance marketplace promotion
• State Lottery Commissions — some of the largest single advertising buyers in any state, typically operating through dedicated AOR relationships
• State Economic Development Authorities — business-attraction campaigns, workforce-development recruitment, site-selection marketing
• State Attorneys General — episodic rather than continuous: consumer protection campaigns, major litigation communications (opioid settlements, consumer fraud actions), cybersecurity and election security public information
• State Higher Education Systems — enrollment marketing, research communications, athletics PR, capital campaigns
• City governments and mayors’ offices — crisis communications contracts, major event hosting (Super Bowls, political conventions, Olympic bids), infrastructure project PR
• Regional transit authorities and port authorities — ridership campaigns, safety campaigns, capital project communications
• State insurance departments and consumer protection agencies — open enrollment, fraud awareness, rate filing communications

The two surprises

Surprise #1: A single city DMO can outspend entire state tourism systems. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s $168 million marketing and sales budget for FY 2026 exceeds the total marketing budgets of more than 40 state tourism offices. The combined hotel-tax-funded DMO budgets of Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio exceed the state of Texas’s entire state-level tourism appropriation by a wide margin. The conventional framing of state tourism offices as the primary destination marketing buyers understates how concentrated theactual money is in a small number of major-city DMOs. For PR and communications firms evaluating the public-sector category, city DMOs — not state tourism offices — represent the largest individual contract opportunities.

Surprise #2: The recurring-campaign public safety segment is larger than most industry benchmarks recognize. State DOT and State Highway Safety Office paid media for NHTSA high-visibility enforcement campaigns is approximately $17 million for a single Click It or Ticket May mobilization alone, matched against roughly $9.7 million in parallel federal NHTSA paid media. Because multiple mobilizations run each year — CIOT twice, Drive Sober twice, Distracted Driving, Motorcycle Safety, Child Passenger Safety, and state-specific additions — the aggregate state-level recurring safety-campaign market approaches or exceeds $100 million annually in paid media alone, before agency fees or creative development costs. The market is predictable, mechanically triggered by federal calendar, and systematically underrepresented in commercial PR industry benchmarking.

“The Las Vegas CVA alone spends more on marketing than 40-plus state tourism offices combined. Theprocurement assumption that ‘state’ is the top of the food chain in public-sector PR is simply wrong — in many of the largest markets, the city sits above the state.”

The PR-to-tourism-receipts ratio and the unit economics

The unit economics of state and municipal PR procurement are structurally different from commercial PRspending. State tourism office marketing budgets correlate not with state general-fund revenues but with tourism-generated tax receipts — a closed economic loop in which destination marketing is effectively funded out of the revenue it generates. North Carolina’s tourism economy, for example, generated more than $36.7 billion in visitor spending in 2024, producing approximately $4.6 billion in federal, state, and local taxes. A state-level marketing investment of $30–40 million in that context represents less than one-tenth of one percent of visitor-generated economic activity, an efficiency ratio that has historically supported sustained budget growth even during state general-fund pressure.

This funding model explains why state tourism marketing has grown steadily over the past decade while most non-tourism state communications spending has remained flat or declined. It also explains why city DMOs in hotel-tax-heavy markets (Las Vegas, Orlando, NYC, Miami) have been able to outpace their state counterparts — bed-tax revenue is both more predictable and more politically insulated than general-fund appropriations.

Procurement cycle considerations: 2026–2027

Three timing-specific dynamics are shaping the state and municipal PR procurement cycle in 2026:

The 2026 FIFA World Cup in the United States, Canada, and Mexico is driving concentrated destination marketing spend in host cities: Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York/New Jersey, Philadelphia, San Francisco Bay Area, and Seattle. Host-city DMOs have released supplemental RFPs for international-market promotion, travel-trade outreach, and destination storytelling throughout 2025, with contract awards concentrated in the 2025–2026 procurement cycle.

America’s 250th anniversary in 2026 is producing dedicated state-level spending in founding-era states. Pennsylvania has proposed $65 million in its FY 2025–26 budget specifically for 250th-related tourism promotion, of which $36.5 million is directed to the Tourism Promotion Fund. Similar programs are in motion in Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey.

The Trump administration’s 2025 federal tourism and travel posture — including import tariff implications and rhetoric that has contributed to declining Canadian and European inbound travel — has increased pressure on state and city DMOs to compensate with aggressive domestic and Latin American market campaigns. Visit Florida has shifted investment into Latin American outreach. Visit California has increased its domestic-focused spend (79% of marketing budget). Las Vegas has expanded into Latin American markets. These shifts are producing RFP activity in categories (Latin American media relations, crisis and destination-reputation communications) that were structurally smaller in prior cycles.

What this means for PR industry observers, state and municipal communications leaders, and public-sector compliance officers

1. The municipal and state PR segment deserves a permanent place in U.S. PR industry benchmarking. The category is larger than standard PRWeek and O’Dwyer’s agency rankings reflect and is structurally insulated from general-fund budget volatility in its largest sub-segment (bed-tax-funded DMOs). The absence of a regular industry-level benchmarking product for this market has contributed to a collective blind spot in how the PRindustry measures its own public-sector addressable market.
2. City DMOs and state tourism offices are the single most accessible major-contract entry point. Unlike federal GSA Schedule contracting — where pre-qualification is required and contract cycles are multi-year — state and municipal DMO procurement operates on predictable annual and three-year cycles, uses standard state RFP processes, and does not require specialized clearances. The procurement documentation is public, the buyer profile is consistent, and the evaluation criteria are transparent.
3. State-level compliance and disclosure requirements continue to expand. State procurement compliance has grown more complex over the past two years, with several states adopting registered-agent requirements, supplier-diversity reporting obligations, and in some cases state-level FARA analogs for firms representing foreign-linked or out-of-state principals. Firms operating in the state and municipal PR category in 2026 should maintain state-by-state registration tracking, documented supplier-diversity certifications where applicable, and clear conflict-of-interest protocols around concurrent private-sector and governmental engagements.

This study was produced by the Everything-PR Research Team and is available for republication with attribution. For inquiries: everything-pr.com.

Methodology note: All figures derive from publicly disclosed sources including the U.S. Travel Association StateTourism Office Budget Dashboard (FY 2024–25), state tourism office annual reports, state comptroller and procurement transparency portals, city and county DMO annual reports and bed-tax disclosures, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration media work plans and media buy summaries, GovWin IQ governmental contract tracking, and reporting by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Hawaii Tribune-Herald, Inside INdiana Business, ProPublica, and Skift. All disclosed figures traceable to primary-source filings; all modeled estimates labeled as such.