Sunshine Matters

VISIT FLORIDA and twenty-two partners – including Florida DMO/CVBs, attractions and hoteliers – embarked on the first ever Digital Education Roadshow last week in Silicon Valley and San Fransciso.  For three days, staff and Partners met with key travel and tourism leaders at Google, Adara, Facebook, Airbnb, Twitter and TripAdvisor where they learned how to leverage each digital company or social platform for their own digital needs, while also being privy to up and coming trends and insights.

Each digital company discussed how data and technology are helping brands make better business decisions.  Their presentations and discussions provoked several key takeaways in which tourism entities need to shift their focus if they want to stay top of mind.

1) There has been a huge shift from desktop to mobile.  Mobile content should be “thumb stopping”.

2) Provoke brand preference and awareness with sight and sound.  Video and photos are the new print ads and postcards.

3) There are many insightful ways that digital companies can track analytics and increase user engagement which will help keep tourism brands relevant in a world of so many options.

The inaugural event was held at a most important time as VISIT FLORIDA begins to lay the foundation for our new digital strategy which will help guide us on our journey to achieving $100 billion in tourism spend.  We have begun implementing many of these insights into our own digital strategy where focus will be on social, mobile and content.

VISIT FLORIDA plans to continue this important annual initiative, so for more information or to attend future events, please contact Becca Smith, Digital Strategy Manager, at bsmith@VISITFLORIDA.org.