Booking A Rebound

Life’s not a beach for southwest florida’s tourism officials.

Faced with unoccupied hotel rooms, smaller crowds at attractions and fewer vacationers flying into Southwest Florida International Airport over the past 15 months, tourism executives have entered a new era for the region’s number-one industry. It is now no longer presumed that tourists will flock to our area–winter, spring, summer or fall.

Not so long ago, most hotel and resort rooms were booked well in advance for those months when cold Northern winters automatically drove retirees and others south to sunshine and sand. Tourism development agencies in Lee and Collier counties focused on promoting the area during the off-season.

Recent world events have caused tourism officials, hoteliers, attraction owners and other businesspeople to focus on marketing the area year-round to bring back crowds. "For the next few years, we need an insurance policy that we will maintain a healthy season," says D.T. Minich, executive director of the Lee County Visitor and Convention Bureau (VCB), which has transformed itself into an aggressive marketing organization armed with a $3 million advertising campaign and new strategies. "Once the economy turns around and the threat of war goes away, we will shift back to focusing on off-season."

Southwest Florida’s tourism industry has experienced a dramatic drop-off followed by a slow climb back to pre-9-11 levels. Statewide, tourism fell 19 percent immediately following 9-11, but rebounded to within one percent of 2001 figures by the end of the second quarter of 2002, according to Visit Florida, the state’s tourism marketing arm.

The competition is fierce from other Florida destinations such as Orlando and the Keys, the Caribbean and even Hawaii. All are going after the same tentative travelers.

In one effort to draw tourists back, many area hotels are deeply discounting rooms and packages. August 2002 was the first month that Lee saw an increase in visitors to area attractions, beaches and resorts compared with the previous year, though the number of room nights and hotel occupancy was still off. Tourism figures before 9-11 were already depressed by an uncertain economy and a reluctance to travel by Europeans, who were rocked by their own economic troubles and an unfavorable exchange rate.

International visitors remain the most uncertain segment. Statewide, there were 13.7 percent fewer overseas travelers and 8.4 percent fewer Canadian visitors in 2002, according to Visit Florida. Germany, historically Southwest Florida’s strongest European market, has been down 15 to 20 percent. In Lee, the number of visitors from the United Kingdom, however, is up slightly and will soon surpass Germany, according to the VCB.

Most tourism officials try to put a positive spin on the

current season, but their predictions carry a caveat: "All bets are off if something really serious happens," like another Gulf War, says economist Walter Klages, whose Tampa-based research firm, Klages & Associates, provides tourism data and analysis to clients throughout Florida. "[Saddam] Hussein is going to play havoc with any predictions." That uncertainty, combined with the lingering effects of 9-11 and continuing economic doldrums, threatens to keep tourism numbers down for a second year.

Absent a war or other acts of terrorism, Klages believes Florida tourism will continue to rebound in the domestic market, but he does not forecast European travelers coming back in significant numbers until summer 2004. Decreases in discretionary income on both sides of the Atlantic and a global fear of flying have changed many travel plans but have had a bigger impact on those traveling across the ocean, he notes.

The Cost of Coastal Tourism

like other tourism bureaus in florida, lee and collier fund tourism promotion and related activities through the tourist development tax, sometimes called the bed tax, levied on accommodations rented for less than six months. In Lee and Collier, that tax is three percent. The state allows counties to raise it to as high as six percent.

In 2001, Lee collected about $11 million in bed taxes, making it the ninth largest tourist bureau in the state, according to the Florida Association of Convention and Visitors Bureaus. (Orlando is first with $97 million in bed tax collections.) Collier collected a bit more than $8 million.

The Lee VCB has a staff of 19 full-time and two part-time employees in Fort Myers, as well as two based in Germany and one in England. Lee devotes more than half of its bed tax revenue to sales and marketing, a high ratio compared with other bureaus, notes Minich. About one-third of the bed tax money goes to beach and shoreline improvements.

Collier, which until recently did not have a separate office of tourism, set aside only $1.5 million for tourism promotion last year. Most of the rest of Collier’s bed tax money goes to beach renourishment.

This discrepancy in expenditures on tourism promotion could explain why Collier has suffered greater losses than Lee, contends Elaine McLaughlin, a tourism consultant (and former executive director of the Lee VCB) hired by Collier commissioners last year to come up with a plan for promoting tourism.

Collier tourism numbers were down 3.9 percent as of mid-year 2002 (totaling 795,635 visitors), compared with mid-year 2001, whereas Lee was down 2.3 percent (totaling 1,466,269 visitors). Collier tourism numbers are lower "because we weren’t in the marketplace competing at the same time everyone else was with as much in terms of resources," explains McLaughlin. "That means we need money and leadership and to bring our industry together in a collective way to compete just the same way that every other Florida county is competing."

Klages agrees that Collier’s troubles were a result of a dearth of advertising. "At a critical point in time, they had very little direction. That has been remedied now," he says.

Collier reacted to its tourism downturn by creating a three-person county government office of tourism and hiring its first director. Jack Wert, former director of the Seminole County Convention and Visitors Bureau near Orlando, began his new job in mid-December. Wert says his first task is to come up with a "consistent single message that everyone can embrace. In the past it may have been fragmented for the different communities."

Lee, meanwhile, launched a $3 million advertising campaign last fall that emphasizes the county’s serene and natural side, separating it from the busier theme-park destinations of Florida with the slogan, "180 degrees from Orlando."

Wert anticipates a similar type of message for Collier, likely emphasizing ecotourism. The county has a lot of natural attributes, "but perhaps it has not been marketed as much as it could be," Wert says.

The hope for the 2003 tourist season is that people will jump into Southwest Florida’s natural world, perhaps to escape the uncertainty of the rest of the world. With similar messages, the opportunity exists for Lee and Collier to work together in promoting Southwest Florida. Now that Collier has a county tourism bureau, Lee’s Minich is hopeful the two counties can soon do some regional promotion. "Because we share an airport, we could be pooling our resources to stretch our reach," notes Minich, adding that Collier and Lee’s target markets are similar in terms of demographics.

Looking to the Skies

southwest florida international airport is an essential component of the tourism industry in both counties. The area got a huge economic boost when the airport opened in Fort Myers in 1983. With the $386 million expansion of the Midfield Terminal set to open in 2005, airport director Bob Ball predicts, "This is just the beginning of the growth of this area." The existing airport is designed to handle 3 million passengers a year. Last year the airport saw 5.1 million passengers. The new airport is designed to handle more than 9 million passengers, expected by 2010.

Attracted by that growth, Frontier Airlines, a low-cost carrier based in Denver, started flying into Southwest Florida in October, offering the area’s first daily nonstop flight between Fort Myers and the Mile High City. The company does not reveal passenger loads, but corporate communications manager Tracey Kelly says Fort Myers was one of its strongest recent openings. "Frontier is a very big deal," Minich says. "It gives us a gateway to the West that we have not had before."

Residents in Denver and in West Coast cities the airline serves will soon be getting the message that Florida is about more than Orlando–delivered with the help of Lee’s new campaign selling "the natural side of things," says Minich. "Here you can stand on a dock and see dolphins jumping in the water–and not because someone is blowing a whistle. We’re real. You can’t duplicate Mother Nature."

Shocks in the Sunshine State

despite the sunny plans, two other aftereffects of 9-11 continue to complicate the job of attracting tourists to Southwest Florida. One is a shift from air travel to driving. For the first time since the 1970s, more travelers are coming to Florida by car than by air. This works against Southwest Florida because it lies so far south. "We really are a flying destination," says Minich. Cities in northern Florida have seen less of a drop-off in travelers since 9-11 because they are easier to reach by car from other states.