Naples Grande Resort & Club, Naples, Fla.
It was meet, greet and eat for 86 meeting planners who attended the 26th annual Florida Encounter—billed as the only state-organized meeting professional trade show of its kind in the U.S.—from Nov. 4-8 at the Naples Grande Resort & Club on Florida’s southwest coast.
With 76 Florida-based suppliers on hand to pitch their place in the sun—region, hotel or attraction—the trade show floor was busy with pre-scheduled and on-site appointments, as buyers and sellers negotiated their piece of Florida’s multibillion-dollar tourism pie.
Group business is a critical part of Florida’s overall visitor mix, Visit Florida officials say, and they’re completely focused on reaching out to more planners and streamlining the overall process of booking a meeting in Florida. To that end, the state’s official meeting planner guide is being revamped, while a new web microsite, Meeting Planner Central, has already been launched at www.visitflorida.org.
Also new: a redesign of the Florida Encounter website, which premiered at the 2006 show and now boasts easier-to-navigate features and a more personalized approach, greeting meeting professionals and suppliers by name.
In fact, “personalized attention” is the stated goal of a show determined to keep suppliers and planners on a one-to-one ratio.
“We like to think we’ve refined this to a well-oiled machine,” said Tracy Vaughan, Visit Florida’s director of sales. “We know that if we bring a planner to Encounter, they’ll be back again.”
No doubt, especially if the show continues to feature the kind of off-site excursions enjoyed by the 2006 delegates. Activities included an evening dine-around on downtown Naples’ sparkling Fifth Avenue, including a stop at the historic Inn on Fifth, and the show’s closing event at Ngala, a group dining and entertainment venue that expertly re-creates a night on safari with enormous canvas tents, period furnishings and artifacts, exotic music and dancing, and animals that guests can interact with.
