Sunshine Matters

Following an extensive intent to negotiate process, I am pleased to announce the appointment of our new Canadian public relations agency, LMA Communications Inc. effective September 1, 2011.

“VISIT FLORIDA is committed to working with best-in-class partners,” said Will Seccombe, Chief Marketing Officer for VISIT FLORIDA. “We are pleased to welcome LMA to the VISIT FLORIDA team and look forward to working with them to promote the Sunshine State in Canada.” Continue reading »

I’m pleased to share that preliminary estimates* of visitors to Florida for the second quarter of 2011 (April-June) show an estimated 21.2 million travelers visited the Sunshine State.  This represents an increase of 6.9 percent from the same period in 2010.  In addition, 5.6 million pleasure trips were taken by Florida residents in-state during the second quarter. Continue reading »

As the official destination marketing organization charged with promoting Florida as a leisure travel and meetings destination, VISIT FLORIDA plans and implements a wide variety of sales and marketing initiatives.  Our goal is to deliver the right message, through the right medium, to the right audience, at the right time, in order to maximize the economic impact of travel to the Sunshine State. Continue reading »

I’m pleased to share VISIT FLORIDA’s preliminary estimates* of visitors to Florida for the first quarter of 2011 (January – March) which show an estimated 23.3 million travelers visited the Sunshine State.  This represents an increase of 3.3 percent from the same period in 2010.

Preliminary estimates for the first quarter of 2011 show a 2.0 percent increase in domestic visitors, a 14.4 percent increase in the overseas market and an 8.1 percent increase in Canadian travel to Florida.  Of the 23.3 million visitors Florida welcomed this past quarter, domestic visitation represents 19.8 million or an estimated 84.8 percent of total; overseas visitors at 2.1 million or 9.1 percent of total; and Canadian visitors at 1.4 million or 6.1 percent of total.  Florida’s tourism-related employment for the first quarter of 2011 was 1,003,200, up by 52,300 jobs, which reflects a 5.5 percent increase when compared to the same period of 2010. Continue reading »

VISIT FLORIDA and our public relations agency Ketchum were honored with the Travel and Tourism Silver SABRE Award for “Tourism Crisis Management – Gulf Oil Spill” at the annual Holmes Group North American SABRE Awards ceremony held this week in New York City.  The SABRE Awards are recognized as the largest public relations awards competition in the world, attracting more than 3,500 entries from more than 40 countries. The awards celebrate PR campaigns that demonstrate the highest levels of creativity, integrity and effectiveness and recognize excellence in public relations programming by highlighting best practices from around the world.  Continue reading »