Florida Tourism: An industry at risk?

Tourism is woven into Southwest Florida, so much so that even the most rabid anti-growther realizes, down deep, that life here without tourists would be much less pleasant. Beaches would still be narrow. One in seven jobs would be immediately gone, and many others, not as directly tied to tourism, would dry up. A cool fifth of all sales tax revenue would disappear, and millions in gas tax would not be collected.

You'd think that the state's tourism business would be well-supported, that government and industry would be carefully grooming and feeding the goose that lays these big, golden eggs.

And you'd think that with resort ads and a good reputation, Florida's tourism industry is on solid ground with vacationers, that the Sunshine State's future is so bright it has to wear shades.

You'd be wrong.

Tellin' 'Em Where To Go

"We've experienced a loss of market share to other areas," says Elaine McLaughlin, executive director of the Lee Island Coast Visitor and Convention Bureau. What does she blame? "Competition. Puerto Rico, the Caribbean Islands, the Carolinas, Texas... all of them are outspending Florida. As a result, the people who once came to Florida are taking their discretionary vacation dollars elsewhere."

Austin Mott is president and CEO of Florida Tourism Industry Marketing Corporation (FTIMC), a public/private partnership dedicated to promoting Florida as a destination. "When you look at the competition," he says, speaking of warm weather destinations, "Puerto Rico alone is spending $55 million." Mott says his agency, the counterpart to Puerto Rico's big spender, spends less than $20 million.

And there are more places vying for vacationers. He lists Jamaica, and the rebirth of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and asks "Who ever heard of Branson 20 years ago?"

In Collier County, Tammie Matthews is executive director of Visit Naples, Inc., a private, not-for-profit tourism promoter made up of industry people. She brings up Las Vegas. "A $27-million campaign, just as a city!" she says. She knows that every time a vacationer, even a regular Florida visitor, sees an ad for another destination, her market may lose that vacationer's business. The more ads the vacationer sees, the more likely defection becomes. "The only way people know about us is to continually put ourselves in the forefront of their minds," she says, "because so is Antigua, St. Thomas, Fort Lauderdale and everyone else."

Competition is not the only reason we are losing market share. The nature of the market is changing in at least two ways.

"Another major challenge our industry has is what we have described as time poverty," explains McLaughlin. She describes visitors as typically upscale professional people, with financial resources, but a lack of vacation time. Their trips are shorter, perhaps three days in duration compared with the typical week-long vacation of days gone by. "We have seen steady erosion in the average length of stay since we began keeping records," she says.

To achieve the same number of bednights (one hotel bed, occupied for one night) today, more than twice as many people have to decide in favor of Florida.

Another contributor to Florida's eroding tourism market share is airline deregulation. Ever since airfares have been determined by competition rather than government, air travel has become affordable for families. Once-exotic destinations are within travel budgets that formerly restricted families to auto-reachable places.

"People are flying instead of driving because air fares are so reasonable," says FTIMC's Mott.

Other destinations are aware of Florida's plight, and smell blood in the water. "The industry knows that we are not being competitive enough," Mott warns.

Where Did All The Money Go?

How competitive are we? Industry professionals encourage a long, hard look at how we spend money that ostensibly should go to tourism promotion. Elaine McLaughlin seems openly frustrated at how revenue from tourist taxes is spent. "In Lee, Charlotte and Collier, we talk of the bed tax as a tourist tax," she says. "In reality, it's not." She reports that only 54 percent of the monies collected as bed tax is used for tourism promotion.

"The bed tax is the seed corn," she says, "and if we eat the seed corn we won't have a crop."

In Collier County, the rate of seed corn plowed back into tourism's fertile fields is even less: only about 16 percent. There, more than 73 percent went to renourish the beaches, admittedly an important amenity. But should revenue generated exclusively by tourists pay the entire amount?

Collier's Matthews exhibits frustration, too. "We've been trying to point out for the last several years... that most of our [bed tax] dollars go to beach renourishment. It needs to be done, but at the same time, the cost is totally funded by tourists, when all the rest of us use the beach, too." Matthews also cites the nearly $300,000 that goes to fund the county museum.

"Should that happen?" she asks. "I'm not sure, but in the scheme of things it would be devastating if people suddenly didn't come here."

The Team Approach

The public/private partnership of FTIMC is a much-touted solution for preserving and growing Florida's share of the tourism market, but mostly FTIMC exists to create some economies of scale. Sal Dickinson is vice president of sales and marketing for South Seas Resorts, owners of nine resort properties including South Seas Plantation, just off Southwest Florida's coast. He likens the process to a funnel, in which FTIMC pitches the entire state, county visitor groups promote their respective counties, and specific resorts proselytize their own properties. "We can take advantage of a large leveraged program where we may not be able to do the same on our own," he says.

Dickinson's faith in such a straight-line purchase path is born out in his company's allocation of advertising funds. "We don't advertise in Europe," he says. "All of our advertising is done domestically. International [promotion] is done through travel trade channels: source books, wholesaler catalogues."

But together, is it enough? Dickinson is sanguine. "All marketing and sales people always argue for more money."

McLaughlin is more direct. She says, "We need to be as aggressive as possible and understand that unless we make the investment with promotion money that we will lose the greater revenue to the community...and lose the greater tax revenue to the state and local government."

(caption for graphs (Maxine has them), which I see laid out side by side, across the page)

Although tourism, tourism employment and sales tax revenues from tourists are slowly growing, industry professionals feel that Florida is in the process of losing much of its tourist market share.

Information courtesy Florida Tourism Industry Marketing Corporation

(caption for Visit Florida logo, fedexed to you from FTIMC; Lori, you have this from a previou