Sunshine Matters

With over 150 Florida industry representatives in attendance at World Travel Market 2011, many of you reading this blog are well aware of the buzz surrounding the show this year.  There was much anticipation for the brand reveal by the Corporation for Travel Promotion.  “Brand USA,” as it is now known, was launched during two invitation-only events and a press conference, and was prominently displayed throughout the trade show floor.  The anticipation of a long overdue U.S. tourism brand created demand for space and, for the first time in a decade, space was at a premium.  Being at capacity meant more appointments and it was very apparent as partners had little down time during the show.

In keeping with the tradition started two years ago of having our own industry (Florida suppliers and UK/Irish buyers) entertain us at the annual Florida UK Night, this year’s dinner took on the theme “Florida’s Got the ‘F’ Factor.  The enthusiastic individuals that volunteered to literally ‘sing for their supper’ might tell you that ‘F’ was for ‘fear’, but on that night, they were all fearless rock-stars. Due to the success of our “Strictly Come Florida” theme the past two years, this event has earned the reputation as the ‘must have’ invite of WTM, so we were in an oversold situation, attracting an elite group of UK/Irish industry.

Six groups performed on the night sponsored by: Virgin Atlantic; Orlando Flexticket; Naples, Everglades CVB, Greater Fort Lauderdale CVB, SKY Resorts and VISIT FLORIDA.  Our very own Elke Boerstra-Bos, part of our UK team based in the Netherlands, was a member of the “Girls Too Loud” group. The winning group, “Branson” included Terry Smith of Virgin Atlantic, Neil Garner of Cosmos and Mark White of Gold Medal.  Thank you to all who supported this amazing evening, particularly to our talented group of musicians!

The Florida UK Night was the talk on the floor on Tuesday, but we were creating more buzz with our media event on the stand.  This year due to the Brand USA press conference conflicting with the traditional VISIT FLORIDA press event held on opening day, we decided to change it up and organized a Blogger and Jogger “Florida Tweet Up” on the Tuesday, mid-day.  This event, themed “Coast to Coaster” was highly successful for us and our partners as we hosted 37 bloggers, reaching 58,960 people, making 117,519 impressions – and keeping the buzz going as I write this blog.

All around, it was a busy, productive week where we connected with new and old acquaintances in one of our most important core markets.