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Florida tourism hopes pinned on staycationers

Sarasota Herald-Tribune photo by E. SKYLAR LITHERLAND

A group of children try to synchronize their jumps at Seacrest Apartments on Siesta Key. The manager says he decided against raising rental rates this year.

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By TONI WHITT

Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Published: April 17, 2009

- With an anemic high season behind them, Florida tourism promoters are focusing all their marketing muscle on a repeat of the "staycationer" phenomenon of 2008 to buoy the traditionally slow summer season.

Floridians vacationing in their home state virtually saved the tourism season last year as cash-strapped residents stuck closer to home.

Southwest Florida saw a drop in visitors and an even bigger drop in money spent here during the high season - the period from New Year's to Easter. Hotels and other tourism-reliant businesses offered bigger bargains, but the deep recession weighed on both occupancy and sales.

Now everyone from local convention and visitors bureaus to Visit Florida, the state's tourism agency, is focusing heavily on getting Floridians to vacation in the Sunshine State. The aim is to encourage residents to visit places they have not yet explored, with the hope that they will attract out-of-state relatives and friends to meet them there.

"We know we have 18 million residents in Florida and 60 percent leave Florida for vacation," said Dia Kuykendall, a spokeswoman for Visit Florida. "We want to get Floridians moving within state so that they become tourism ambassadors. Once we get them moving, we know we can get their friends and family here."

The Sarasota Convention & Visitors Bureau already has begun to tout the shoulder and summer seasons through marketing and newspaper advertising, by promoting events like "Savor Sarasota" restaurant week and free summer activities and by sponsoring some free contests and giveaways for overnight stays.

Cost is everything to vacation consumers right now. Surveys show 97 percent reporting that affordability is the key to booking a vacation and that 30 percent say they would switch destinations in a heartbeat if they could get a better deal, said Virginia Haley, president of the Sarasota Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Not since the post-9/11 season have people vacationed the way they have this year, she said.

In the economic malaise, vacations are being planned around family. In this region, those families are still going on beach vacations, renting condos or rooms with small kitchens that allow them to eat in.

Business travel has been slammed, both by the economy and the stigma of expensive junkets among some large corporations who have received federal bailout money.

"We may have eked out some slight increases, or at least kept it equal in terms of leisure tourists," Haley said.

"They are paying less for their rooms so the revenue isn't great. But we've definitely had losses in terms of corporate business, like the rest of the country."

Sarasota County saw March occupancy drop just over 3 percentage points, from 89.6 percent to 86.5 percent, while average room rates dropped 8.3 percent from $181.53 to $166.53. Meanwhile, the county's bed tax collections have fallen every month since October, with February the worst at 14 percent.

Manatee County saw a nice spike in tourism revenue during January -- 5 percent -- in part due to exposure in national publications, but it dropped nearly 8 percent in February.

Charlotte County's January revenue was down, but it rebounded in February with two new hotels opening and the Tampa Bay Rays starting their spring training season in the county's refurbished stadium.

A tough time

There was plenty of warning that Southwest Florida's high season was going to be sluggish.

In the three months going into season, tourism dropped 13.6 percent statewide, with 16.6 million fewer people visiting Florida. Travel from overseas also had dropped about 8 percent from October through December.

Even the Canadians were not flocking to Florida in the numbers tourism bureaus had come to expect, with a 5.7 percent decline in Canadian travel during the fourth quarter.

The number of people flying into Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport was down more than 20 percent from January through March, levels not seen since 2005.

To combat those numbers, Sarasota County launched a $400,000 advertising campaign early in the high season aimed at drawing visitors from the Northeast and Midwest as hotels and resorts put together discount packages.

Mike Martin, who manages the Seacrest Apartments on Siesta Key, a condominium community offering vacation rentals, said Seacrest usually increases rates each year, but abandoned that notion in a tough 2009.

The condos, which range in price from $799 to $1,675 per week during high season, have been full since February.

Returning retirees booked well in advance and, in the last two weeks, families who decided to get together during spring break filled out early April, Martin said.

Other beachfront resorts have not been so fortunate, especially those catering to business meetings and conferences.

The exception, sort of

While high season was down in both Manatee and Charlotte counties, neither appears to have been hit as hard as Sarasota County.

Manatee benefited early on from coverage in national publications, touting its old-fashioned and family-friendly beaches.

"Anna Maria is just famous for what it is," said Larry White, executive director of the Bradenton Area Convention & Visitors Bureau. "It's kitschy, it's comfortable, not formal. You can eat at a restaurant with your feet in the sand. People relate to that."

White also is marketing to that "close to home" crowd, as well as to Europeans, especially Germans and Netherlanders, who have not been hit as hard economically as the British.

While White expects tourism from Great Britain to be down, he also is "cautiously optimistic" that overall tourism will hold its own and possibly be up for the rest of the year.

This has been a pivotal year for Charlotte County.

Tourism tax collections were down about 14 percent in January and then rose 9 percent in February as the new hotels opened and the Rays began their spring training. The county added a minor league baseball team, the Stone Crabs, owned by baseball Hall of Famer and former Baltimore Oriole Cal Ripken Jr.

Also, after 20 years without commercial air service, Allegiant Airlines and Direct Air brought more than 10,000 passengers into Charlotte during the past year.

But Charlotte tourism promoters are not taking anything for granted, said Becky Bovell, director of the Charlotte Harbor Visitor & Convention Bureau.

Like everyone, the bureau is marketing to Floridians, but also working with Allegiant and Direct Air on promotions. Promoters are even working with hotels to offer a "weather malfunction" guarantee -- "we don't use the H word here" -- Bovell said.

"We are targeting more upscale visitors, and people with more niche interests, like golf, boating, kayaking and nature," she said.

"We also have an aggressive summer strategy to bring in more people."

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