Locals | Owen Organization

Conexión October

Here’s the Conexión Florida article for October.

There have been changes in tourism here along the Northern Gulf Coast. They are subtle, but you may have noticed them all the same. Those changes are going to continue, too.

First of all, remember Snow Birds? They come from the northern states of the USA and Canada, where it gets cold in winter. Traditionally they come to our part of the world for at least part of the winter. It used to be that they would arrive just before, or just after, Christmas and the New Year—and stay between a month to three months. The birds are great for the area because they bring us tourist dollars during what has always been a slow season. They keep many of the restaurants open, and by extension, keep jobs going throughout the year. Many of the snowbirds consider this as much ‘home’ as they do their summer bases up in the north. I once spoke to a couple of winter visitors who said they felt the birds actually lived here, but just spent summer ‘up there’ to get away from the heat!

Read the rest of the article here

Conexión Florida – August

Here’s the Conexión Florida article for August:

I’m not only hooked on traveling, I’m hooked on watching travel programs on television.

I’m not talking about the shows that are trying to get you to book a vacation with the sponsor, but the real behind the scenes, genuine and authentic versions.

There’s been a great series over the past couple of years called ‘Amazing Hotels – behind the front desk’. The concept behind the series is that a chef and a restaurant and hotel critic travel to various hotels around the world and actually work in them. Well, I say work in then but really, it’s a case of shadowing various members of staff in their day-to-day tasks. While this is happening, they gain insights into not only how those hotels work, but what the front-line workers think about the industry and the effect that tourism has on their lives.

They’ve featured huge spectacular hotels in Singapore and Dubai, safari lodges in Africa, small and very expensive hotels in remote parts of South America and very remote lodges in Iceland. Over the past two years they’ve visited a wide variety of extremely different locations. Without exception they’ve found that working in the hospitality and tourist industry has had a profound effect on the local workers and……….

Read the rest of the article HERE

Conspiracy theory?

I received a comment recently from a visitor who was asking if there was a ‘coalition of local Hotel/Motels that controlled prices during the summer season’. The gentleman thought that as rates were as low as $120 in the winter season and as high as $600 in the summer it must be a plot to rip off tourists. His suggestion was that such summer prices were beyond the resources of less affluent travelers and that such rates would discourage visitors from out of state.

Naturally I told him that such collusion was illegal and was very much discouraged within the industry. The Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association actually read out an anti-collusion statement before each meeting just to make sure that everyone is aware.

Not only that but to actively jointly raise prices would take away the element of competition that drives the tourism industry. I’m not saying such practices haven’t happened, but it doesn’t seem logical.

In fact I think there is a case here in Northwest Florida, and in other very seasonal destinations, where the low rates of winter are actually subsidized by the higher summer rates. Accommodation providers suffer from a difficulty in employing enough staff for the summer peaks. They don’t want to loose good year round employees by laying them off during the winter so in many cases use the profits generated in the summer to keep everything running during the winter. I think that applies to many restaurants too.

Basic economics would indicate that the law of supply and demand is working well. Winter rates are low to encourage whatever business can be attracted. Summer rates are high because there is a finite amount of stock and a limited amount of time when the majority of tourists can be here – essentially Memorial Day to Labor Day, although with schools breaking later and returning earlier that window is getting shorter.

Ideally our tourist season would be spread out allowing for a greater spread of rates. That would also encourage year round employment and less of a scramble for high season staffing.

All of us in the industry know this. If there is any collusion it’s to try and encourage tourists during the periods outside of the peak summer months. Various attempts have been made to rename this as ‘the best season’. That’s fine as a customer facing branding exercise but within the industry we must call the seasons what they are: low, shoulder, peak and (July 4th week) Super Peak.

Of course by attracting tourists in April, May, September and October we’re in danger of alienating our locals who consider these periods of perfect weather and low traffic as ‘their own’ and reward for putting up with gridlock traffic and no restaurant space in June, July and August. Not to mention Spring Break – so I won’t mention it.

A similar situation exists in Europe where school holidays (vacations) govern package holiday and flight prices. Another case of supply and demand. Airlines and tour companies have been accused of artificially raising prices during the vacations making travel for families beyond affordable. Some parents in the UK have been taking their kids out of school in term time to get lower prices. They are fined by the schools, but just factor the cost of the fines into their vacation costs.

The solution? Many little things I fear, each of which would have a small result but the culmination would be sizable.

Encourage the school systems to stagger their break periods. Some do this, but not enough.
Work with school systems to stop shortening summer breaks.
Go after markets that have different school vacation periods – Canada and Europe for example. UK Schools don’t break until July and don’t go back until September. They also have longer ‘half-term’ breaks in October and November and around Easter. Our weather in those times is perfect for the Northern Europeans.
Expand our marketing to those sectors that aren’t governed by school timetables. Millennials, younger boomers, empty nesters, the list is almost endless.
Actively promote lower rates outside summer. Many do this already.
Strengthen weekend break and short break marketing, out of high season, to places like Atlanta, Birmingham, Tallahassee and new markets thrown up by the likes of Allegiant Air and Southwest.

We also need to have some regional agreement on marketing. Continuing to market as just South Alabama, Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton, Bay, etc., etc., and ignoring the fact that for some marketing a regional approach is more effective can be counter productive. Some work is being done in this direction and should be applauded and encouraged.

Of course we also have to get the message out to our visitors, like the gentleman who contacted me, that the reason the prices are high in the summer is exactly because we attract so many tourists at those times. Far from being put off they come anyway, and that lets us put up prices, subsidizing the less busy seasons.

As I say, basic economics. …..or perhaps there is a conspiracy that I haven’t been told about!

August Newsletter

Welcome to August!

Here on the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico, the peak of the summer tourist season is drawing to a close as the schools begin to return for the new academic year. The majority of the summer tourists to the area that stretches from Apalachicola on the Forgotten Coast through to Orange Beach and Gulf Shores in Alabama (actually also further through Mississippi to Louisiana) relies heavily on the family market and draws from the whole of the South East and now up into the mid west. So, now comes the time to reflect on what we did well and what we can improve for 2018.

Of course, the best part of the year is yet to come, as the weather cools slightly and humidity drops, we start to attract both local tourists and the visitors who are not tied to school vacations. A time for festivals and events that draw in an audience that tend to spend more and have an emotional attachment to the Gulf Coast.

How do you reach out to these guests to your business? What’s the secret to getting under their skin? I recently wrote a blog post about the impact that the iPhone and other smart devices have had on the travel, tourism and hospitality industries. In many cases we don’t recognize how things have developed over the past ten years or the major impact changes have had. We’ve seen how the music industry moved through cassettes, CDs and into downloads (possibly back to vinyl too!) over a relatively short period of time but the changes brought about by smart devices have been more rapid and continue to evolve. Fingerprint recognition on phones is now commonplace for unlocking and payment systems but now it’s rumored that Apple will introduce facial recognition on their next iPhone. At the same time Delta Air Lines who have been using electronic boarding passes on flyers phones are now experimenting with identifying passengers with fingerprints and iris scanners.

Does this have an impact on you? If you’re involved in the accommodation industry, how long before the move to door locks that react to smartphones is common place. Major hotel groups are rolling those out and even cruise companies are fitting out their ships with them. This is at a time when many condo owners resist even installing free wi-if for their guests.

How about payment systems take Apple Pay and the Android equivalent? Is that becoming pervasive and does your restaurant/attraction/hotel (insert the appropriate business!) accept it? I was surprised at a fairly high end restaurant recently to be told they didn’t accept American Express cards for payment, let alone any phone based payment systems. That seems to me to be alienating a whole sector of high spending guests.

We are seeing grocery delivery to condos an beach homes taking off with companies like Destin Grocery Girls and now Whole Foods, Fresh Market and Publix offering similar services. This could well have an effect on how many times tourists visit restaurants during their stay. The delivery of very high quality food to your own vacation kitchen, means you don’t have to go out to fight traffic, find parking or restrict alcohol consumption. The tourist may then just go to restaurants for their ‘amazing’ experience.

These are all changes that are happening faster than we care to admit, and need fast reactions from those of us in the industry.

Traffic, tourists and tourism employees.

One of the things that agitates us locals about the summer season is traffic. Believe me it affects the tourists too. The great danger is that the visitors, particularly those coming for the first time may be put off returning if they spend a lot of time stuck in traffic jams. It’s a phenomenon that affects the whole of the Gulf Coast to a lesser or greater extent, although the actual manifestations vary from area to area.

For some destinations traffic issues are pure access. The Saturday snarl-ups at the mid-bay bridge for example, or the lines along 98 around the Navarre bridge. On 30A there are certainly some bottle-necks but the issue there appears to be where to find a parking space. Okaloosa Island and Fort Walton Beach suffer from the bridge with junctions at both ends, while Destin is in grid lock for various reasons from Destin Bridge all through to the county line in the east. The ‘season’ for this is of course from Memorial Day to Labor Day. The rest of the year there is not such an issue. This all stems from our infrastructure which was not planned to cope with the volume of traffic during the peak season. No person or entity could have foreseen such growth when the road system was planned (or happened!) years ago.

The apparently obvious solution is to build more roads, elevated highways or even ban traffic, but none of this makes sense in the short term. Roads take years to plan and authorize, and highways cost upwards of $1 million a mile to build. I’ve been looking at what tourists destinations worldwide are doing to solve such issues in the short term, making best use of the resources they have available, plus how they are planning for 5, 10 and 20 years ahead – giving the time it takes to plan and build infrastructure changes. It’s vital to factor the demographic and attitude changes we can foresee or guess. For example, fewer people are learning to drive and many are not considering car ownership. Ride sharing and acceptance of efficient and pleasant public transport is growing. Autonomous vehicles are coming faster than many are recognizing. Building infrastructure based on current attitudes and technology may be inefficient and frankly redundant. Added to that we need answers now, not in five or ten years time.

Walton County have a parking issue. Those visitors who visit 30A need somewhere to park, so the county has used bed tax to purchase a total of 12.66 acres of land to provide for beach access, parking and a future trolley hub. This seems, to this tourism guy, an eminently sensible move.

I mentioned that Walton County have recognized that parking is their major problem and they have taken steps to address this immediately. The County has spent $24.1 million of bed tax on 12.66 acres of land including 697-feet of beachfront. This will primarily be used for parking but critically also for a future trolley hub.

Visitors, who we should recognize are increasingly familiar with ride sharing (Uber and Lyft), and public transport in their urban home environments, are happy to use trolleys on vacation if those are comfortable, efficient an either free or cheap. They will give up their cars for a more stress free experience. Indeed with the drop in people learning to drive, and in car ownership particularly in urban environments (where most of our visitors originate) they may be attracted by the availability of trolleys. Subsidizing these services may prove cheaper than building roads (at a cost of upwards $1 million per mile) or maintaining them. It’s also something that can be done now, for next season, rather than in 5 or 10 years.

How about 98 through Destin? Well, much of this traffic is visitors driving through the area, and we need to encourage a lot of this to transit through and around the area on I-10. However, a great deal of the volume is getting from accommodations to the beach, the stores, events and restaurants. Not only does this traffic clog the roads but needs parking at either end. Many destinations are solving this issue by providing park-and-ride services. Acquiring parking areas is invariably cheaper than building roads and certainly more immediate. Subsidizing trolley services is again cheaper than building and maintaining roads. Importantly, the trolley service must be attractive, so it must be efficient, pleasant and crucially be a better experience than using your own vehicle.

This means the trolley must have priority over other road users, either by creating bus lanes (possibly only during peak traffic periods) and by making the ride cheaper. Free trolley travel, and charging for parking, except at the park-and-ride stop is a good start and is being used in many destinations across the country and around the world. Providing trolley transport and park-and-ride would also help workers in the tourism and hospitality industries get to their jobs too. They need all the help they can get!

Remember that these concepts can be implemented quickly not over many years. They’re also in use in many other places. They are measures that can be switched on only at peak times, either during particularly heavy traffic hours, days or certain months. They can be flexible in that we can adapt to changing demographics and fashions and we won’t end up covering the whole coast in tarmac!

Our solutions to these challenges need to be radical and inventive. We don’t need to reinvent solutions. Many others have already proved they work.

A further traffic issue we have in the area from Fort Walton Beach through to 30A is how the people who work in the tourism and hospitality industry get to and from work. Comparatively few industry folk actually live in Destin or on 30A. They travel in from Fort Walton Beach, Crestview, Niceville and further out. The cost of gas alone makes a dent in their income and their presence on the road increases congestion. Many travel across the Mid Bay Bridge and get no break in the tolls. It makes no sense if these workers have to work for an hour just to pay their Bridge tolls. Surely the Bridge Authority could engineer a 5 day pass for these vital workers as a starting point. Again, cheap or free park and ride using public transport to could not only make our strategic tourism worker’s lives better and more cost effective, but could reduce traffic congestion particularly during high traffic months.

These aren’t socialist ideas or anti-capitalist suggestions. These are sensible ways of maximizing our infrastructure, making the area both better to visit and to live in, and remarkably cost effective. Roads cost $1 million a mile to build and years to plan and implement. Bridges cost even more and take even longer. Public transport, even subsidized, costs less and can be put into place right away or at least by next summer.

We have to take into account as I’ve said before, the changing demographics. Just because people drive here now and have dome for years, doesn’t mean they will continue to do so in the future.

In case you were wondering…..

….what happened to my weekly column in the Northwest Florida Daily News, here’s the scoop. Actually, I hear mutterings of “what column” and “what’s the Daily News?”, but I’ll ignore those for the moment!

Despite being asked to write the Talking Tourism column and being assured that both the newspaper and the readers enjoyed the piece and it was everything that had been asked for, it appears that I mentioned travel and tourism suppliers like Uber, Lyft, Trip Advisor, TripShock, Airbnb etc., but failed to give sufficient coverage to destin.com. destin.com is a website owned by the Daily News and is apparently the source of all tourism information in the area. Mea Culpa. I was referring to sites and companies who actually sold travel and tourism products, as opposed to just collecting tourism related stories.

No matter. The content of Talking Tourism will still be published on owenorganization.com/news, and there will also be a monthly Tourism Topics column in Coastlines, the publication brought to you by The Greater Fort Walton Beach Chamber of Commerce.

Keep your ears and eyes open for some other developments around the Talking Tourism subject over the next few months.

Until next month……

Please follow Owen Organization on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and 500px and on owenorganization.com.

The BEST season is just around the corner. Time to shout about it.

Can you believe that next Tuesday is August 1st? Labor Day is just a month away, and schools go back around August 10. Traditionally the summer tourist season here on the northern Gulf Coast runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day, what was called the 100 days of summer. These days, with schools breaking later and returning earlier, it’s almost the 60 days of summer. From the industry’s point of view, there’s a big weekend for Memorial Day, then a pause until the schools have been out for a week. Independence Day is huge, although the real success depends on which day the 4th actually falls. Then the season continues until the schools return when there’s a breather until the big Labor Day weekend.

As we locals know, the passing of Labor Day brings one of the two best parts of the year (the other being between spring break and Memorial Day) when the humidity disappears, the heat backs off just a tad, and the large numbers of tourists (those with their young families) are absent. It’s the time we all love, the ideal time to live here.

It’s also the time to attract those tourists that we really love. The higher spending, lower party size, Boomers and Millennials who come for the festivals, life style, food and culture. Not that we don’t love the families who fill the beaches in the summer of course.

Successful tourism maximizes income during the Summer Season, so that the fewer numbers of higher spending visitors during spring and fall provide the icing on the cake. A small increase in these guests provide a thankfully disproportionate increase in income. How to attract this small increase?

Obviously we need to keep our attractions, restaurants and experiences open. We need to plan our concerts and cultural events for this time of year. We need to heavily promote what we feel is the best season of the year.

Many of my fellow industry professionals want to ban the term ‘shoulder season’ when referring to Fall. The move is to call it the Best Season. I understand where they’re coming from. To those in the industry, between ourselves, it will always be a case of high, shoulder and low seasons. That’s inescapable. But to the tourists renaming Fall ‘The Best Season’ maybe simplistic. Best for what?

This is where really clever marketing will come in. Tailoring our message to individuals or personalizing, is where tourism marketing is succeeding now. If you love fishing then the Fishing Rodeo is YOUR season. Music, seafood, arts all appeal to small but high spending individuals with the opportunity to travel. I will say that if you Google ‘Fall Festivals Florida’ you’ll be hard pressed to find many in our area. That’s something that can be solved with creative search engine optimization of course. The Alabama coast has cracked that.

The Best Season, Your Season, Festival Season whatever. Let’s get the word out that Fall is the absolutely greatest time to be here.

TALKING TOURISM: Match expectations to airline carrier choice

This article first appeared in the Northwest Florida Daily News on Sunday, July 9, 2017.

Last week we started looking at different kinds of airlines and their effect on tourism. There’s always a danger of assuming, just because they fly planes and transport people, they’re all the same. That’s no more true than saying that staying at the Hyatt Regency is the same as a night in a budget motel.

Here along Florida’s northern Gulf Coast, we’re served by a number of airlines with different business models aimed at various markets and needs. We each have our favorites and I don’t intend to criticize any of them, just to point out some differences.

Each of our local airports is served by what are termed legacy carriers — American, Delta and United. These three companies are the result of years of consolidation, takeovers and mergers. Each has a huge network of international, domestic trunk and local routes. In many cases, they operate on a hub-and-spoke principal (it’s said, with a smile, that all routes go via Atlanta, Dallas or Houston!). In fact, you may find that your local legacy carrier flight is operated by a contracted “partner” airline. For example, American Eagle, Delta Connection or United Express are all operated by other airlines, but under their partner’s colors; they are different aircraft types and crews than “main line” services. It’s the reason you can expect a whole different experience flying say Destin to Dallas, than you would Dallas to San Francisco, or Dallas to Sydney, Australia.

We also have Southwest Airlines, a popular low-cost airline. They don’t need to support a worldwide network (yet) by funneling business into hubs, and although they do chase business traffic, it’s not their prime market. We’re not served by Jet Blue or Spirit, which also are both low-cost carriers, but all these airlines have different policies for what they provide within the fare, and for what they charge (baggage, food, etc). Of course, the legacy carriers also compete for the budget market, so on their aircraft you may find frills and space, few frills and little space, or no frills and no space depending on how much you paid.

Also flying into the Gulf Coast is Allegiant Airlines. They may be termed a low-cost airline, but it would be more appropriate to call them a leisure carrier. They aim to attract vacationers from predominantly urban and cooler areas and take them to sunny vacation places. Allegiant is more in the model of the European leisure airlines. They’re really a full travel company, selling not just flights, but tours and accommodations, too.

Finally, we have the airlines like GLO, Silver and Contour, which operate smaller aircraft on less-traveled routes, like New Orleans and Bowling Green. They provide a great service for local business travelers and vacationers.

So, we have to manage our expectations and match them to our needs and pocket book, just as we do with our other tourism choices. We should also look at how air travel has transformed tourism, but that’s for another day.

Martin Owen is an independent consultant to the tourism industry and owner of Owen Organization in Shalimar. Readers can email questions to martin@owenorganization.com.

Talking Tourism: Lesser-used facilities open gateways to cheaper travel

This article originally appeared in the Northwest Florida Daily News.

By Martin Owen | Special to the Daily News

Posted Jul 1, 2017 at 2:00 PM

I recently had to take a flight back to England, and this allowed me time to give some thought to the changing face of aviation and its effect on tourism. Air services and airlines have been at the center of the explosion for tourism — not only worldwide, but within the U.S.

To many of us, all airlines are the same and essentially just a way of getting from one place to another. We tend to expect them all to provide the same sort of services and behave in the same way. There are, however, as many different sorts of airlines as there are different sorts of hotels and accommodations. Each matches the particular needs of varying sets of travelers.

For the business traveler, flights at the right time, that are on time and the ability to work while flying are probably more important than price. For the leisure traveler on a budget, price is the most important factor, with fast inflight Wi-fi and lots of leg room worth sacrificing. When I was involved in selling flights from the U.K. to Australia for vacationers, if our advertised price was $5 more than a competitor’s, our phones simply didn’t ring — and that was when the average price was around $1,200. Our lead-in price had to be $499 to get people to call.

I mention all this because a recent entry into the transatlantic flight market is stirring things up. Norwegian Airlines has been a “low-cost carrier” since 2002 and now serves 150 destinations around the world. Although they term themselves low-cost, they emphasize low fares with excellent service. Many in this category of airlines in the U.S. have achieved lower costs by using one kind of aircraft and cutting inflight service, meals and charging for what they term optional extras — like baggage! Norwegian claims instead that new efficient aircraft and a lean operation is their answer. They also fly to some interesting destinations.

For example, they not only fly from Gatwick Airport in London to both JFK in New York and Newark Liberty International in New Jersey, but also fly to Stewart International Airport, a lesser used facility 70 miles north of the Big Apple. They fly to Boston, but also to Providence, and not just to Los Angeles, but also Oakland.

By using lesser known gateways, they can keep their prices low. That leads me to think that the Panama City, Pensacola or Destin-Fort Walton Beach airports could be interesting potential gateways for a carrier like Norwegian. They can offer the Europeans low cost airports, fantastic beaches, great weather, access to the northern Gulf Coast, and the whole Southeast of the U.S. In return, that would also give us locals access to European destinations at bargain prices. Someone call the folks at Norwegian Air!

Of course, there are other airline types — legacy carriers, flag carriers, tourist and leisure airlines, main-line services, commuter and feeder lines, intrastate and regional carriers. All have different ways of getting us from here to there. We’ll look at differences in coming weeks.

Martin Owen is an independent consultant to the tourism industry and owner of Owen Organization in Shalimar. Readers can email questions to martin@owenorganization.com.

Talking Tourism: Not taking enough days off.

This article first appeared in Northwest Florida Daily News on Sunday, June 25, 2017.

Studies recently have shown that as a nation we’re not taking the full number of vacation days to which we’re entitled.

Judging by the number of cars on U.S. Highway 98 and along County Road 30A, you’d think that the world and his wife were on vacation and that they’d chosen to visit this particular paradise. It’s really good that so many people decide to share their vacation time with us.

However, all is not rosy with the state of U.S. vacations.

Studies recently have shown that as a nation we’re not taking the full number of vacation days to which we’re entitled. According to the U.S. Travel Association’s Project: Time Off, the average number of days vacation we receive is 22.6. Between 1976 and 2000 we took, on average, 20.3 of those days. Last year we only took 16.8 days.

During the survey, 41.9 percent said that they weren’t going to take a single day of vacation this summer. Of course, that could mean that people intend to travel at other times, but the indications are that people are just not vacationing.

Things are even worse here in the South, where 44.7 percent said they weren’t intending to take a summer vacation. That number was even higher among women (51.5 percent) and younger folks.

Why are we doing this? Apparently the number of people saying they can’t afford a vacation has dropped considerably. Most respondents to the various surveys indicate that they don’t feel they can be away from work, or no one else can do their job. This increases among Millennials, and particularly Millennial women, 46 percent of whom think it’s good for their bosses to see them as “work martyrs”.

Having run a number of companies over the years, this seems counterintuitive. Every good manager recognizes that a rested and refreshed worker is more productive than someone who is tired and burned out. It’s also a sign of a good manager that they organize their work life to ensure that the company can operate without them for at least a short time.

But this is a column about tourism, not business practices. The simple fact is that the country needs people to take vacations. One in 18 U.S. jobs is directly or indirectly involved in the tourism industry — that’s 7.6 million jobs. The accommodations and food service sectors each employ 1.9 million people. Here on the Gulf Coast, in Okaloosa County alone, it’s estimated that 32,405 were employed in the tourism industry in 2015. Direct spending by tourists brought in $2.9 billion, and the tourist-generated tax revenue (bed tax, sales tax, etc.) was $554.1 million in 2015 — and it’s increased since then.

There are indications that international tourism into the U.S. may be down this year (see last week’s column), so domestic travel is more important than ever. Obviously it’s good for your health to take vacation. It’s good for your family, too. However, given the benefits to jobs and the economy — especially here on the Gulf Coast — I’d say it’s your patriotic duty to vacation.

Talk to your friends and family and persuade them to visit us here. Share a little sunshine.

Martin Owen is an independent consultant to the tourism industry and owner of Owen Organization in Shalimar. Readers can email questions to martin@owenorganization.com.

TALKING TOURISM: Promoting area’s hospitality jobs worth exploring

This article was published in the Northwest Florida Daily News on Sunday May 20. 2017.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the need to train our tourism and hospitality employees, and mentioned the new courses being set up by Northwest Florida State College in addition to those being offered by the University of West Florida. At a recent meeting I sat with folks from our accommodation providers, restaurants and attractions who were discussing the challenges they face. All agreed that the advanced training being provided is absolutely vital to our future as not only a growing tourist destination, but one that was constantly increasing its professionalism, and as a consequence the quality of its tourists. Higher quality equals higher spending.

One of the biggest problems they face, if not the biggest problem, is actually finding those employees. Every spring sees a rash of “Now Hiring” signs along the Emerald Coast. Companies look far and wide to fill the positions that will cater to our tourists throughout the season to come.

To read the rest of the column, please click HERE

TALKING TOURISM: Breweries could offer a new tourism niche

This article appeared in the Northwest Florida Daily News on Sunday May 13, 2017

Our third president, Thomas Jefferson said “Beer, if drunk in moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit and promotes health.” He could have course said the same thing about tourism, particularly if combined with beer!

I recently visited Asheville, North Carolina, on a research mission – OK, it was vacation but I’ll stick with my story. We took in tours of a couple of breweries – New Belgium and Sierra Nevada both have large establishments there. These are craft brewers, albeit big ones who needed to have presence on the East Coast. Both companies started up out west and have found the combination of location, water supply and culture in Asheville matched their needs. There are also smaller brewers located in the area along with hard cider makers. The interesting thing is that these companies have become an integral part of the local tourist industry.

To read the rest of the column, please click HERE