Staying current in the digital age was the big message of this year’s Florida Governor’s Conference on Tourism, which carried the title “Friends, Fans and the Future” and lured 800 attendees from the state’s destination, lodging, attractions and transportation sectors to the Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa in Hollywood, Fla.
Not only were delegates encouraged to interact via social media during the convention, but presentations and breakout sessions focused on the marketing viability of such platforms as Twitter and Facebook. In other words, traditional marketing vehicles like print and television ads, brochures and even flashy websites are no longer enough to get your tourism message out there, speakers contended.
“Our digital footprint begins with the website, but it’s much more than that,” stated Will Seccombe, chief marketing officer of Visit Florida, the state’s official tourism marketing corporation and host of the conference. “Our brands live with everyone that’s telling our story…in other people’s words, blogs and tweets. Today, consumers expect to see messages how they want them and when they want them.”
That message was echoed in a presentation by keynote speaker Amir Kassaei, chief creative officer of DDB Worldwide, who actually recommended tossing the phrase “social media.”
“Digital isn’t a medium, it’s an infrastructure,” Kassaei said. “It’s like the electricity of the 21st century. We’ll live in a world where everything will be connected and people will know everything in real time. You can’t sell them something that doesn’t have value because they’ll find out immediately.”
Kassaei essentially told the ballroom filled with seasoned marketers that their ideas about creativity and advertising messages could be off by about 180 degrees.
“Content beats media, and content will find itself moving from media to media. The age of awareness is done,” he announced. “If you’re not producing relevance, you will not reach your customer. People don’t want to be sold anymore, they want to be treated as fellow human beings. If you’re authentic with people, they’ll respond.”
As an example of new marketing directions, Kassaei pointed to a movement currently taking Europe by storm. Called the Fun Theory, an initiative of Volkswagen (http://thefuntheory.com), it engages people with interactive messages. For example, instead of posting signs urging people to get more exercise, this group painted stairs in a subway station to resemble piano keys that actually played notes as people trod on them. Not surprisingly, 66 percent more people chose the stairs over the adjacent escalator.
Social media, effective websites and the overall media landscape were addressed by other speakers at the Governor’s Conference, while another compelling session hosted by Duane Vinson, vice president of client services at Smith Travel Research, tackled the state of Florida’s lodging industry.
Noting that occupancy rates and demand are finally rebounding, Vinson claimed that the hotels themselves were still struggling, especially when it comes to meetings and conventions, as rates that were slashed in order to draw more business during the depths of the recession have never recovered.
“Rates pretty much fell off a cliff in 2009,” Vinson said.
And while a rate recovery is under way in transient business, group demand is lacking, he added.
“We’re just now getting into the fall conference season,” he said. “Does it look good? No. We’re outpacing the last two years, but nowhere near what we saw in ’07 and ’08.”
Meanwhile, on a national scale, many new hotel construction projects have either stalled or been cancelled. Vinson said there would be “no meaningful new supply [of new properties] for at least three years.”
Still, with New York City at the top of the new hotel construction heap, two Florida cities were close behind: Orlando in second place and Miami seventh in the top 10, according to Smith Travel Research.
There was more good news for hotels in Florida and the rest of the country, Vinson concluded.
“Pricing is slowly returning, with demand improving across the board,” he said, though he also added that “group travel and rate growth will be slower at returning than other demand segments. We should see improvement by 2012 or 2013.”
