“Selling the Sunshine”: The 2009 Florida Governor’s Conference on Tourism – 42nd Annual

This year’s conference held at the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach had something we have not seen in a few years – an appearance by the Governor. Although his talk to the 500 or so attendees was short, and politically convenient, it was still a positive visual affirmation of the importance of tourism to our state.

The hotel outdid itself in the service provided, the attention to detail, and the innovative and outstanding quality of the food at all the meal functions. Kudos to the Fontainebleau and its staff for impressing everyone who attended! It will be a hard act to follow at next year’s event to be held in Orlando.

The conference was a shortened version of those held in previous years with the object of saving attendees money on hotel stays. It remains debatable whether or not it was the economy, or the switch in format, but there were a lot less people in attendance. All sessions were done en masse and were a bit more generic than in the past.

Interesting to hear was a presentation on the history of tourism to Florida -- traced by the increased number of visitors through the years from 2 million visitors to Florida in 1929 to 84 million in 2008. And the statistics show this currently means $65.2 billion dollars in taxable sales to our state. As an industry, however, we need to do a better job of educating our legislators and fellow residents of the importance of tourism to our state’s economy.

One positive note in the otherwise negative facts on declining demands and low occupancy rates, et al, is that there is some slight improvement and we are not down as much as the rest of the country. Another positive aspect is that the perceived affordability of travel is up with more leisure sales than business sales. In one survey Florida ranked as the number one destination of where people want to go on their “dream vacation”.

In other travel trends cited, it was noted that consumers in the next 18 months will be working to spend less money by bundling (booking packages), comparison shopping online, and staying fewer nights. It was suggested that we invest our money on getting our guests (who are planning to come anyway) to stay longer at our destinations and in our hotels.

One of the panelists suggested that the smart money is in strategic discounting – in other words, only discount in low periods of demand when you need the business and wouldn’t have gotten it anyway. Especially make sure you focus on where you offer any promotion.

With Visit Florida, the state tourism agency, losing $10 million from state budget cuts, about $8 million has been eliminated from Florida's usual program to bring vacationers into the Sunshine State, leaving $9 million for the task. They have a new advertising agency, DDB Miami who will be concentrating more on radio ads than TV. Since the agency was only recently selected, no sample ads or campaign highlights were presented at the conference.

Plan on being at our next meeting September 16th at the Broward Convention Center. Best, Julie Wernick, HSMAInsider, and HSMAI-South Florida Managing Director.