Sunshine Matters

The VISIT FLORIDA Public Relations team and participating industry partners recently completed an annual series of media missions in Florida’s key feeder markets, which included Atlanta, Birmingham, Boston, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

During the missions program, appointments were made with a total of 38 key media representatives, consisting of both traditional media outlets and bloggers who are influential among readers and followers in social media. Highlights included meetings with Southern Living Magazine, Cooking with Paula Dean, Orbitz, The Chicago Tribune, Ebony Magazine, USA Today, National Geographic Traveler, The Boston Globe, Wicked Good Travel Tips, Family Travel Network, WCIU TV in Chicago, AAA World and The Atlanta Journal Constitution. Continue reading »

As the state’s official source for travel planning, VISIT FLORIDA provides visitors with two key resources for discovering all there is to see and do in the Sunshine State.  The first is VISITFLORIDA.com, the most trafficked destination marketing organization website in the country.  The second is the VISIT FLORIDA Magazine, the state’s premier travel planning publication.

The most significant driver for traffic to the website and readers of the magazine is VISIT FLORIDA’s highly-successful domestic advertising campaign, Your Florida Side Is Calling.  For every $1 spent on tourism marketing, VISIT FLORIDA generates more than $177 in tourism spending and $11 in new sales tax collections.

In an effort to better understand the role the website and magazine play in converting viewers into visitors, VISIT FLORIDA commissioned a conversion study designed to measure the impact of these two tools and overlay those results with the advertising effectiveness research to see the comparative impact.  The study revealed that, of the 4.5 million visitors to the website during the survey period (excluding residents/relocators), 78% subsequently traveled to the state – representing 3.5 million visitors.  Among those website visitors who had not decided to visit the state prior to going to the site, 56% subsequently traveled to Florida.  This totaled one million visitors whose direct spending equaled $3.4 billion. Continue reading »

For the past two years, VISIT FLORIDA has been partnering with American Express and Florida Travel + Life magazine on a television series featured on the Discovery Channel called Florida Travel + Life’s Affordable Luxury.  The series is all about getting acquainted with affordable luxury in Florida and features a different destination in the Sunshine State each show.  Eight episodes have aired to date, with recent episodes spotlighting the Space Coast, Fort Lauderdale, the Florida Keys and Orlando. Continue reading »

In an ongoing effort to support its vision of establishing Florida as the No. 1 travel destination in the world, VISIT FLORIDA attended South by Southwest (SXSW) for the first time.  The interactive conference is a greenhouse of ideas and solutions featuring presentations, keynotes and events hosted by some of the brightest minds in emerging technology. Continue reading »

VISIT FLORIDA Senior Editor Kevin McGeever (oh, that’s me) will join the Poynter Institute as visiting faculty for an April news conference and workshop series called “Creating Credible Content.”  The seminar will “focus on teaching corporate communicators and digital content providers how journalism skills and values can help build trust relationships with their audiences.”

VISIT FLORIDA has been an industry thought leader with content marketing (see: Google Currents).  The hiring of a senior editor and the birth of the VISIT FLORIDA Travel Wire have established a new standard with the conception, reporting and production of original content. Continue reading »