I’m following Visit Florida on Twitter, and it’s a bit of an eye opener to watch this confident DMO in action. Yesterday VF tweeted that its Board had approved its new Strategic Marketing Plan. Click through to the Chief Marketing Officer’s blog (Will Seccombe, pictured), and there’s the Plan – ready and waiting to be downloaded.
You may think that the UK is a key visitor market for Florida – but it’s page 28 before the first mention. Their key markets are, of course, domestic – with ‘in state’ being critically important.
But yes, despite significant drops in volume and value, the UK is still their number one overseas market – just – with 1.2m Brits visiting in 2009 (a drop of 12%) and spending $785m (a drop of 29%). (Florida’s Brazil market, by the way, has grown dramatically – with spend now almost equal to the UK market, and spend per head significantly higher.)
The plan quotes Mintel research to underpin Visit Florida’s optimism about a UK bounceback. It tells us that “the staycation is falling out of favor as more Brits are booking holidays overseas”. Hmmm.