Waterford — Tourism Advocacy Day is all about what happens in Hartford, where state lawmakers typically have a lot to say about the fate of one of southeastern Connecticut’s leading industries.

But it’ll start here Monday morning in the Crystal Mall parking lot near the J.C. Penney store, where tourism workers and supporters are expected to board a Joshua’s Limousine coach bound for the Capitol. Only a few spaces hadn’t been booked as of late Friday afternoon.

The free bus, sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut, is scheduled to depart at 8:30 a.m. and return to the mall around 2 p.m. Tourism industry workers, such as chefs, waitstaff and those in other hospitality jobs, have been encouraged to wear their uniforms “to make the greatest impact.”

In Hartford, events hosted by the Connecticut Tourism Coalition will begin at 10 a.m. in the Capitol’s Old Judiciary Room, and a meeting with members of the legislature’s tourism caucus is set for 12:30 p.m. in Room 1C of the Legislative Office Building.

While the coalition has championed an increase in funding for statewide tourism marketing and the restoration of funds for regional efforts, it’s not clear it can do better than the $8.3 million in annual tourism funding Gov. Dannel P. Malloy included in his biennial budget for the 2018 and 2019 fiscal years.

Given the state’s financial straits, even that much could be in jeopardy.

“Quite frankly, I’m very concerned that that number may go down,” Tony Sheridan, president and chief executive officer of the Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut, said earlier this month, referring to the $8.3 million.

The coalition, comprising tourism operators and advocates from across the state, many of them from southeastern Connecticut, has testified in favor of a bill calling for the establishment of “a tourism promotion, jobs and revenue account” that the commissioner of the Department of Economic and Community Development would use “to market the state for tourism purposes, encourage job growth in the tourism industry and support the tourism industry as a whole.”

The account would have been funded with “a portion of the occupancy tax collected on hotels and lodging houses.”

Those collections amounted to more than $119.7 million in the 2016 fiscal year, according to the Connecticut Lodging Association, which supported the bill.

Stephen Tagliatela, president of the coalition and managing member of the Saybrook Point Inn, Marina & Spa in Old Saybrook, urged that the bill be amended to stipulate that 3 percent of the revenue generated by the occupancy tax be dedicated to the tourism account.

In fiscal 2016, that would have generated nearly $24 million.

Another bill drafted early in the legislative session would have directed a portion of the occupancy tax revenue to the three state regional tourism districts that lost funding at the end of the 2016 fiscal year.

None of the tourism-funding bills has advanced beyond the Commerce Committee, their point of origin.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com