Congressional hearings into the fallout from the giant oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will take on a local flavor this afternoon.
Keith Overton, the senior vice president and chief operating officer of the TradeWinds Island Resorts on St. Pete Beach and chairman of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association, is scheduled to testify at 2:30 p.m. before a Senate committee on the environment and public works in the nation's capital.
Overton is worried about the economic fallout from the spill along the west coast, even though oil has yet to wash ashore in Florida.
He likens the bad publicity from the oil spill to the 2004 hurricane season, when he said tourists thought the entire state was ravaged, even though many areas were spared.
"The perception now is that the whole state is under oil," he said last week during an interview. "We are worried about that. Frankly, it is scary."
Overton and other hotel and motel operators have gotten many phone calls from prospective tourists asking if beaches here have been tainted with oil. The calls come as oil continues to gush from a rig that exploded April 20 off the Louisiana coast.
Overton was invited to speak to the panel by U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat from Florida.
He plans to ask senators to make sure that someone pays for a marketing campaign - perhaps even BP - to let prospective tourists know Florida is still untouched by oil.
Overton is worried if oil hits the Panhandle, people everywhere will see photos of blackened birds and beaches and assume the entire state has been affected.
"We need to be preemptive on that and we need marketing dollars in order to do that,'' he said shortly after landing in Washington, D.C.
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