Tourism doomsayers are exaggerating.

It’s now official. Fewer of your state tax dollars will be spent promoting tourism next year.

Legislators finished their session by rebuffing Gov. Rick Scott’s demands for higher tourism subsidies, cutting Visit Florida’s budget from $78 million to $25 million.

To hear tourism boosters tell it, this will prompt an economic apocalypse.

Visit Florida CEO Ken Lawson actually claimed that nearly one out of every three of the state’s visitors — 32 million people total — will now bypass Florida.

With a tourism collapse like that, you’d think that Shamu was caught devouring Snow White.

Or that Zika-infested mosquitoes had invaded Islands of Adventure while sharknadoes bore down on the Florida Keys.

Really, though, all House Speaker Richard Corcoran and Co. did was roll back tourism subsidies to where they were seven years ago.

Basically, the politicians finally started treating Big Tourism the way they treat public education … which may explain why the tourism execs are so upset.

Still, claims that these cuts will prompt a near-collapse of the state’s No. 1 industry seem wildly overblown for many reasons.

First of all, tourists don’t come here because Visit Florida debuts a new “Must Be the Sunshine” slogan or spends $1 million to slap its logo on the jerseys of a secondtier European soccer team.

They come because Universal unveils a new Harry Potter attraction. Or because Disney opens Pandora. Because the economy is good. Because they need a port from which to cruise.

To believe Visit Florida is responsible for success or failure of Florida tourism is to ignore the numbers that show otherwise — as Corcoran is fond of noting, pointing to years where visitor counts rose even as Visit Florida’s budget shrank and vice versa. Also, it’s not like the Legislature

banned tourism promotion. Tourism enterprises are still free to advertise as much as they want. They just have to use their own money … the way virtually every other business in the world already does.

Seriously, this is the way business works. You spend money to make money. You don’t count on taxpayers to do it for you.

But perhaps the most troubling part of Visit Florida’s sky-is-falling prediction is this:

Consider for a moment what it means if they are right — if curbing subsidies truly prompts a near-collapse.

That would mean that the state’s century-old, No. 1 industry is fatally addicted to welfare.

And if that’s the case, we need to help this subsidy-dependent sector wean itself — you know, give them a hand up vs. a handout, teach them how to fish and all those other things we say about those who are addicted to entitlements.

And this is an addiction.

Just this week, the Sentinel reported Visit Orlando is using tax dollars to put pictures of a little girl with a Minnie Mouse doll on buses that drive around New York City — as if Disney, which just posted quarterly revenues of $13 billion, isn’t perfectly capable of paying for its own bus wrappings.

Visit Orlando, by the way, is slated to remain flush with cash. Orange County will continue to direct more than $200 million in hotel taxes each year to Visit Orlando, the convention center, the downtown venues and other tourism-promotion efforts.

In other words, Visit Florida is merely one of many taxpayerfunded spigots.

At this point, proponents of tourism subsidies sometimes say: “But Scott, this isn’t about Disney. It’s about the smaller institutions — the museums and other cultural attractions that need the spillover.”

First of all: Hogwash. It is about Disney and the other big guys. After all, it’s not the Orange County History Center or Mennello Museum of American Art plastered all over buses in Times Square or whose roller coasters are featured on the TV ads running in Brazil.

Second, if you really want to help the smaller cultural institutions, wonderful, then help them. With direct funding. I stand ready to applaud.

Really, these subsidies aren’t about need as much as habit. Florida politicians are in the habit of handing your tax dollars over to the tourism industry, and tourism execs have gotten addicted to taking them.

We continually subsidize a low-wage industry and then wonder why we remain a lowwage state.

I believe tourism in Florida will continue to thrive — as long as the economy’s strong, the attractions innovate and the businesses provide quality service.

And sure, advertising and promotion helps — which is why businesses do it all the time … with their own money.