Here’s the Conexión Florida ‘Let’s Talk about Tourism’ article for July…
About 20 years ago, it was predicted that workplace automation, the rise of the internet, and the ability to work from nearly anywhere would lead to a massive increase in leisure time. And as a result, we would see an increase in tourism worldwide. This was predicted to be good for everyone: more travel, more vacations, and a better-funded tourism industry with well-paid jobs for all… Well, the result has happened, and world tourism is at an all time high. However, the reason for that increase was not really as predicted.
Certainly workplace automation, computerization, and the ‘always on’ mobile Internet have had an effect; but the boom has come from other areas. The rise of the Boomer generation was the first driver. Those born after WW2 through 1964 have come to retirement age across the world. They may not actually retire completely…….
Here’s the Conexión Florida ‘Tourism in the Gulf’ article for May.
Why do you go on vacation? Certainly, it is to rest and recharge your batteries. According to a multi-lingual friend of mine a phrase like “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” is used in many different cultures, so getting away from your usual routine is certainly a good reason to go on vacation. Here on the Northern Gulf Coast it’s usually assumed that our visitors come for the beach. After all our beaches are beautiful! Ask the tourists and that’s what they’ll probably tell you, but if you delve a little more deeply, the answers become more enlightening.
How many of our guests actually spend all their time on the beach? Relatively few, if truth were told. They come for the food, the shopping, and yes, the experiences. They come for the beach lifestyle certainly, but there’s much more to that than lying on the sand.
Tourists to the Gulf Coast are pretty much three main types: families, millennials (born between 1978 and 2000) and boomers (born between 1946 and 1964). The last two types are the largest traveling groups and they tend to arrive not only during the school vacations, but throughout the year. Both groups are looking for experiences. They want to do things that they can’t do in their day-to-day life, and they want to share that experience on their social media with friends……..
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.
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.
The following article was published in the Northwest Florida Daily News on Sunday, May 28, 2017.
A few people have told me that they read the Talking Tourism column each week, but are a little puzzled by my references to Millennials, Boomers and Zoomers. Fair comment, so I’ll try to explain.
Much as we like to think we’re all the same in our outlooks and approach to traveling, we’re not. There are all sorts of influences on our opinions, but for those of us in tourism and hospitality marketing, we have to make a few generalizations. One of the easiest ways is by dividing the travelers into generations as it’s been found that’s a pretty accurate way to predict how people will behave, what their likes and dislikes are, and how we can best appeal to them. Obviously, the lines between the generations are blurred and, of course, it’s dangerous to overgeneralize how people behave. If you Google the subject you’ll be overwhelmed by academic and not-so-learned opinions.
To read the rest of the article, please Click Here
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.
Back last year we visited Asheville, North Carolina and I wrote about our experience visiting the Sierra Nevada Brewery (See Here) It was great and of course on a return visit this year we felt obliged to go back and check that it was still as good. It was. The restaurant was still serving great food and accompanying it with excellent beer. The store was still selling beer related souvenirs and take-home bottles, six and twelve packs and the ubiquitous Growlers.
We also decided to check out the competing New Belgium Brewery. New Belgium has similar history to Sierra Nevada in that its origin are in the west – Colorado this time, rather than California – and that it was born out of the craft beer movement when beer lovers became disenchanted with carbonated, chemical drinks pushed at us by the big brewers. Similar movements have taken place around the world, notable being the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) n the UK, which subsequently spawned the annual Great British Beer Festival. Suffice to say though that Craft Brewing is spearheaded around the world by excellent US breweries and their beers. However back to New Belgium…..
The New Belgium Brewery is smaller than its Sierra Nevada comrade but none the worse for that. It has a different vibe, just a little more relaxed on the tourism front. The tour is of course free to tempt the faithful to identify even more closely with the brewers. Their maximum number of tour members is 20, but on our tour there were only 5 plus the tour guide, Lucy. Lucy was part of the Brew Team and was certainly knowledgable about the process, history, culture and products. There is a great sense of fun in the organization with employees being given a New Belgium bike after a years service and things like a slide to get from one level of the plant to another – see the photo! New Belgium is an employee owned company and so is unlikely to be absorbed into one of the Big (Chemical Producing!) companies. Unlike Sierra Nevada where the tasting session takes place at the end of the tour, New Belgium indulges visitors with tastings at strategically placed ‘bars’ throughout the plant. The tour ends being dropped off outside the tap room and gift shop (of course) and the Sierra Nevada full scale restaurant is replaced by a Food Truck which is really VERY good.
Which was best? Neither. They are both professional, fascinating and well worth a visit. If you’re going to the area, please try both. Not just from the beer tasting point of view, but to look at how an industrial process has been turned into a tourism opportunity.
Down here on the northern Gulf Coast we have also been absorbed by the Craft Beer movement in recent years. Both the tourists and of course the locals have been calling for something other than mass produced fizzy chemical water. Our large Military contingent along the coast has contributed to this, as they know their beer!
Without too much research you can find 13 craft breweries between Pensacola and Apalachicola. These are virtually all paired with good restaurants and all sell their own beers and the souvenirs aimed aimed at their followers. A good number have formal brewery tours, an I’m guessing that that those that don’t could happily arrange a meet up with their Brewmaster on request.
Of course this is another tourism opportunity for our Destination Marketing Organizations to jump on. The Emerald Coast Beer Trail (I’ll happy donate that title to the cause in exchange for a glass of IPA) could have tourists visiting sites right along the coast. Perhaps some sort of treasure hunt collecting stamps at the different locations, with a prize for getting all of them? Nice Marketing at it’s best and simplest, appealing to Millennials, Boomers and Foodies at the same time. The other thing to mention is this is a year round activity, and it isn’t dependent on the weather.
Just to help out here’s a list of the local Northern Gulf Coast Craft Breweries that I’ve found.
Pensacola Bay Brewery
225 E Zaragoza St
Pensacola, FL 32502-6048
(850) 434-3353
www.pbbrew.com
McGuire’s Irish Pub & Brewery
600 E Gregory St
Pensacola, FL 32502-4153
(850) 433-6789
www.mcguiresirishpub.com
Gulf Coast Brewery LLC
500 E Heinberg St
Pensacola, FL 32502-4145
(850) 696-2335
www.gulfcoastbrewery.net
Props Craft Brewery
255 Miracle Strip Pkwy SE Unit B19
Fort Walton Beach, FL 32548-5833
www.propsbrewery.com/
McGuire’s Irish Pub and Brewery – Destin
33 Highway 98 E
Destin, FL 32541-2309
(850) 654-0567
www.mcguiresirishpub.com
Destin Brewery
505 Mountain Dr Ste N
Destin, FL 32541-7334
www.destinbrewery.com
3rd Planet Brewing
120 Partin Dr N
Niceville, FL 32578-2053
(850) 502-9952
www.3rdplanetbrewing.com
Grayton Beer Co
217 Serenoa Rd
Santa Rosa Beach, FL 32459-6099
(850) 231-4786
www.graytonbeer.com
Idyll Hounds Brewing Company
845 Serenoa Rd
Santa Rosa Beach, FL 32459-5019
www.idyllhoundsbrewingcompany.com/
Nivol Brewing
483 N Richard Jackson Blvd
Panama City Beach, FL 32407-3647
(850) 249-1150
www.nivolbrewery.com
Uncle Ernies Bayfront Grill & Brew House
1151 Bayview Ave
Panama City, FL 32401-1452
(850) 763-8427
http://uncleerniesbayfrontgrill.com/welcome/
Oyster City Brewing Company
17 Avenue D
Apalachicola, FL 32320-1801
www.oystercitybrewingco.com
If I’ve left anyone out, please let me know!
getting employees to another level.A morale boosting experience?The brewery is built on the site of an old circus.After a year of service each employee gets a bike.
I recently had the opportunity to participate in a podcast called Lodging Leaders with Jonathan Albano.
Lodging Leaders brings together the best and brightest minds of the hotel industry to share their stories, insights and actionable advice. Each week, LodgingMetrics.com founder and entrepreneur Jon Albano interviews inspiring hoteliers and leading industry professionals that have produced amazing results.
For those not on our mailing list, here’s the March newsletter!
Navarre Beach.
Last month, we discussed how some politicians in Tallahassee, the Florida State capital, were playing politics with the future of Visit Florida, the State’s destination marketing organization. That fight isn’t over as we’ll report.
This month other politicians both here in the USA and in other parts of the world are having influences on tourism in ways they cannot predict.
Good news however is that Culinary Tourism is booming. Read on….
Political shenanigans
The move by Speaker Corcoran to de-fund Visit Florida continues, although he has indicated that he no longer wants to close the organization down, merely to limit its ability to operate and drastically reduce its budget. Governor Scott is fiercely fighting this along with the Tourism Industry and it would appear, members of the Senate. The fight is not over and if you’re involved in the industry in Florida, I urge you to a) contact your representatives to support Visit Florida and b) attend Tourism Day in Tallahassee this month to lobby in person. Please contact me if you need details of how to attend Tourism Day.
In what promises to be a difficult year for international tourism, further obstacles are being dreamt up by politicians on either side of the Atlantic.
The strong US dollar has the potential for discouraging European tourists in particular from visiting the USA this year. Some of those European economies are not strong currently and the USA could be expensive for them.
We now have the three year-old dispute between the EU and the USA over visas. The EU parliament consider that the countries of the community should be considered as one (that has resulted in the UK wanting ‘out’ with their Brexit vote), although the US still recognizes individual states. The US has refused to allow some EU states access to the Visa Waiver Program which allows visa free travel into the US. Poland, Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania and Cyprus don’t meet the US security requirements. The EU has said that either the US accept these countries or all US Citizens will require visas to visit any EU country.
This is an old dispute and has now reached the ‘Who blinks first’ stage. Despite the strong dollar which makes overseas travel attractive, American tourists would be very discouraged if they were required to get a visa. Europe needs those US dollars after a lackluster 2016 tourist season following terrorist attacks, and although advance demand has been strong, it wouldn’t take much to scupper that.
Traveling the other way – east to west – is also potentially threatened. I mentioned the strength of the dollar being a hazard, but what has been called the ‘Trump Effect’ is apparently causing a softening of travel demand. I’m not making any political points, just reporting on figures coming from sources in the tourism industry.
It appears that first announcements of a travel ban had a detrimental effect on European tourists plans to visit the US. I’ve been asked why, say, a German tourist would feel threatened by a ban on travelers from certain middle east countries. I can’t answer that easily, but believe me they are worried. Even the UK tourists who believe they are part of a ‘special relationship’ with the US, are as a group being cautious. Suffice to say that enquiries for flights to the US are down an average of 22%. Tourism research firms are projecting a loss of 6.3 million visitors ($10.8 billion in lost revenue). The tourism board of New York City has predicted that 300,000 fewer tourists will visit than did in 2016. Previously New York was predicting an increase of 400,000. Philadelphia has already lost one conference worth an estimated $7m as a result of the proposed travel ban.
Even the Canadian market is seeing a drop in the number of tourists intending to travel below the 49th.
That’s International tourism of course and it’s been suggested that it won’t affect US destinations that don’t cater for Internationals (like Northwest Florida, where only 1% of tourists are from outside the US). That may be true, but of course the markets that attract overseas travelers are hardly likely to sit and do nothing. They will want to find domestic tourists to replace the foreigners and they are not averse to creating marketing campaigns and making offers to lure those domestic guests away from places like the Northern Gulf Coast.
As the old Chinese curse says “May you live in interesting times”.
It’s not all bad news though…..
95% of travelers have said that they engage in unique and memorable food or beverage experiences while traveling, according to the World Food Travel Association ( I guess that they would say that!). Another research organization, Destination Analysts, claim that 50.7% of Millennials won’t visit a destination that doesn’t have good restaurants – although they don’t define what makes a good restaurant.
Before you state that Millennials are just children, remember that the first Millennials turn 35 this year! Also important is that the Centennial Generation (Generation Z or ‘Post Millennials’) are now just beginning to enter the workforce, so are beginning to effect the market.
Certainly the younger generations are having a strong influence on their parents and grandparents when it comes to food. A recent report by the HAAS Center (part of the University of West Florida) was created to examine tourism trends in Okaloosa County (home to Destin, Fort Walton Beach and Okaloosa Island). They found that although tourist spending in restaurants in the county increased in 2015 more than 15% over 2011, its revenue per seat had grown only 12%, where peer and competing counties had grown by 28%. The competing counties are where most (but certainly not all) of the new and more creative restaurants are found. Interestingly, the area has seen an increase in the number of up-scale grocery stores (Whole Food Market, Fresh Market and Publix). Whereas in 2011 tourists spent twice as much in restaurants as they did in grocery stores, it’s likely that 2016 will see tourists spend more in grocery stores than in restaurants for the first time.
The take away (sorry!) is that those tourists are seeking culinary experiences, and finding them.
Which brings me to the really good news for my home area. I recently attended the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association’s annual awards ceremony for the North West Florida region. The display of talent at that event was stunning. The quality of the areas chefs, wait staff and managers was exceptional and their depth of knowledge, experience and creativity was at least a match for more recognized tourist areas. A similar level of expertise was evident in the hotel, resort and accommodation sector.
That Culinary Tourism is growing makes really good news for the industry as a whole. It’s also great for The Northern Gulf Coast of Florida. The Tourism Industry worldwide is going for Culinary Tourism in a big way from the traditional destinations of Europe to the New World and areas like Australasia. Even Costa Rica getting in on the act. Don’t underestimate the Cruise lines either.
Did you know that just 14 percent of Snapchat users are over 35 years old, where as half of Facebook users are over 35? If you asked what Snapchat is, then I guess you must be nearly as old as I am. The thing is that in tourism the digital world is where everything is happening. It’s been that way for a while and digital, particularly mobile devices, are leading the way. Google has seen a 50 percent increase in travel-related searches over the past year on smartphones — not tablets and laptops, but smartphones.
The younger travelers, millennials and centennials are committed to their phones and their influence on old travelers is very strong. Parents and grandparents are going to the youngsters for advice and research. These groups also love images and video. Instagram is the favorite social media channel for 33 percent of U.S. teenagers compared with only 14 percent for Facebook. YouTube reaches more people between the ages of 18 to 49 than any network TV or cable provider. YouTube reports that interest in travel-related video is up 60 percent in the last couple of years.
What does this mean for tourism?……
