Florida Governor, VISIT FLORIDA Tackle Tourism Downturn

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(News Source: VISIT FLORIDA)

(MIAMI, FL) -- Because tourism is one of the biggest economic engines of the state, Florida Governor Charlie Crist and the state's VISIT FLORIDA tourism board held a special summit at the Fontainebleau Resort in Miami Beach this prior week to discuss initiatives to help deal with the global tourism slowdown.

In a two-hour presentation given by both the new VISIT FLORIDA CEO Chris Thompson and Chief Marketing Officer Will Seccombe, plans were laid out on various cost-cutting measures and cooperative advertising strategies to leverage relationships within the Florida tourism industry, hotel owners and related service providers for the benefit of the industry as a whole.

Chris Thompson stated, "In today's economic realities, it's about leveraging relationships and creating efficiencies, while still being innovative to attract future visitors to Florida."

Will Seccombe also noted that "for every VISIT FLORIDA $1 spent on advertising to attract tourists, there is a return of $53 in tourist dollars spent in Florida that also yields $2.50 in taxable revenues to the state."

VISIT FLORIDA was created in 1996 by the state's legislature to promote Florida's tourism industry to the world and to make Florida the number-one tourist destination in the world.


 

Florida's tourism industry is big business. Florida has over 84M visitors a year that require employment of over 1M local Floridians.

According to VISIT FLORIDA, tourism for the full 2008 calendar year generated over $65.2B in taxable sales and over $3.9B in tax revenue for Florida.

In a lunch keynote speech, Governor Crist said, "I applauded VISIT FLORIDA's efforts to continue to promote Florida as a place to visit, live and play."

It turns out Governor Crist is correct in his comments.

According to the second keynote speaker that day, Richard Florida, Florida tourism is a direct link to future Florida homeowners.

Richard Florida commented, "travel allows people to have a sampling of future places they want to one day live, work and play in - permanently."

Florida - the author of bestselling The Rise of the Creative Class and Who's Your City? - is one of the world's leading public intellectuals on economic competitiveness, demographic trends and cultural and technological innovation.

While some of those tourists may be future Florida home buyers, Will Seccombe further commented, "many visitors are looking for unexpected surprises when they come to Florida on vacation - we call them 'freedom seekers."

With today's economy, let's hope that Florida's tourism industry itself doesn't have too many unexpected surprises in 2010. Too many Florida jobs are at stake. 

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