Revoke the demise sentence for statewide tourism advertising

Written by Michael Lewis on March 2, 2021

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Florida visitors fell 34% last year as Covid-19 hit tourism as of March. This year tourism will fight in the shadow of the coronavirus every 12 months. Legislators have to help.

Events and gatherings collapsed in Miami-Dade, arrivals buzzed in the air, foreign visits slowed to a trickle, and cruise ships anchored. For example, the number of jobs in the hospitality industry fell by 16.3% in December compared with December 2019, when the district employed a record 147,300 in the visitor sector.

The legislature, which began meeting on Tuesday, is now being asked to cut the noose around the noose around the necks of tourism marketers who need to bring more visitors to Florida as our largest industry falters like never before.

Concern about a sick tourist climate in Florida is the economic equivalent of giving our residents the Covid-19 vaccine. How can anyone doubt that lawmakers will rush to help?

Unfortunately, while maximum funding for Visit Florida’s marketing is vital to our economy, saving the goose that laid Florida’s golden eggs is not safe.

In recent years, some legislators have tried to exempt tourism marketing from all funds. You have reduced the amount and incorporated the cancellation of the agency’s function into state law on October 1, 2023. One has to wonder which state these people believe they represent, since tourism is central to all of Florida.

These misguided lawmakers have argued that the world knows all about Florida’s wonders, and visitors will automatically keep flocking. They claim that no funding is required for tourism to improve every year – it just happens.

In fact, they nearly withdrew Visit Florida ‘s remaining $ 50 million in government funding last year. At the last minute, as tourist events began to fade when the coronavirus became tangible, lawmakers abandoned the cancellation of that $ 50 million plus $ 27 million for the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau, which visits our area marketed.

Now, 12 months of coronavirus proves visitors won’t flock to Florida forever. Our state has been hammered. And when vaccines spread and people start traveling again, there is no guarantee that the flow of visitors that we lost will automatically return.

A post-pandemic world won’t be the same as it was a year ago. Some people will work from home. Large gatherings will not be common. Many meetings stay with Zoom. Social habits have changed.

If we pull out of the pandemic, tourism gains won’t come automatically here either – in fact, they never have been. Because of this, the state is staffed with local marketing teams, and Visit Florida serves the state as a whole.

Just as the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau has a bigger job locally than ever, so does Visit Florida nationwide. If we don’t try new marketing Patterns we will have big problems.

Some of the marketing will take place in our back yard and ask the Floridians to visit their own regions when the virus wears off and they are on their way. Some will think outside the box: Visit Florida started advertising in California, Oregon, and Washington after targeting areas on the east coast within a one-way drive for months.

Travel patterns will change, and Visit Florida and others in the tourist world need the budget to get in touch.

You won’t always be successful. Not all marketing works. And it will be years before the industry comes back. Visit Florida and state economists look to the year 2024 – maybe late 2023 if all goes right.

A Senate bill aims to commute Visit Florida’s death sentence. If the agency has a ticket to expire in 2023, any recovery through 2024 will lack bounce. The bill would also relax the rules for the agency’s use of the severely reduced funds, allowing it to transfer unused money year after year to plan future campaigns.

Tourism marketing has long been severely underfunded at both the state and local levels, partly due to the misconception that visitor wins are always effortless. Florida’s competitors in the visitor industry have always had much more to spend. And while Florida’s natural attractions may be bigger, advertising and marketing affect the mind.

Now, more than ever, we have to compete against each other to demonstrate vacation safety in Florida. We need to reduce the 34% drop in visitors that cost our state 197,000 recreational and hospitality jobs last year.

It would be wiser if the state spent more on marketing to get those jobs back. It is not. The legislation on the table would only keep Visit Florida alive without a formal death sentence.

In these economic times, this deserves a unanimous yes vote in Florida – even with a rising marketing fund, as government studies show that every US dollar spent on marketing to visitors brings US $ 3 and more. It is not an additional cost, but an additional income and vital jobs restored.