Robert Silk
It has been an eventful year thus far in the Florida tourism industry, both good and bad.
On the bright side, the state has continued to be its usual travel industry juggernaut. Through the first six months of this year, the Sunshine State had drawn an estimated 57.3 million visitors, up 4.3% from last year's record results, according to Visit Florida.
Conversely, this summer has brought a barrage of bad news to Florida. In Miami, officials are dealing with the first homegrown Zika outbreak in the U.S. In Orlando, June brought the Pulse nightclub mass murder as well as the alligator attack death of 2-year-old Disney World visitor Lane Graves. Along Florida's central east coast, a choking algae bloom captured national headlines around the July 4 holiday. And last week Hermine became the first hurricane in 11 years to make landfall in Florida when it came ashore south of Tallahassee.
This week, both Florida's successes and its challenges will be topics of conversation as more than 1,000 people convene in Orlando for the annual Florida Governor's Conference on Tourism, put on by Visit Florida.
The conference, which started Sept. 7, will be attended by, among others, travel suppliers, travel agents and visitor bureau representatives and includes the usual exhibit hall. But what makes it stand out is the lineup of talks on Thursday and Friday. Sessions will focus on the interplay between the global economy and the Florida travel industry, the impact of tourism on Florida's economy and the changing landscape of crisis management in the tourism industry. Other sessions will touch on mobile marketing and the many regulatory issues that are impacting air travel.
Visit Florida CEO Will Seccombe said he views the conference as an opportunity to make sure the Florida travel industry is aligned when it comes to handling the opportunities, trends and challenges facing the market.
Educating Florida travel providers and marketers on the newest developments in digital and mobile evolution is crucial, he said. So is developing a collaborative message to keep Florida moving forward in what Seccombe called the "hypercompetitive" global travel market.
But Seccombe isn't downplaying the especially difficult set of circumstances that Florida faces at present.
"It's been a particularly challenging summer," he said.
Aside from the cycle of bad publicity that began in the Pulse nightclub and has continued almost unabated through Hurricane Hermine and the present Miami Zika outbreak, Florida is also dealing with structural challenges, Seccombe said.
The strong dollar and economic recession in Brazil were major factors in a 3.5% decline in tourism from Canada during the first half of the year and a 5.6% decline in tourism from other international locales. Brexit and the weak pound are expected to soften visitation next winter from the U.K., traditionally Florida's second-largest supplier of international tourists, behind Canada.
During this week's conference, Florida travel professionals will have a chance to collaborate on the strategy to counter those challenges and assure that the state's $89.1 billion tourism industry of 2015 grows in the years to come.
"When you have challenges that have the potential to impact consumer impressions of Florida, it's really important that everybody is speaking on the same page," Seccombe said.