Visit Florida reaches out to Canada, England seeking tourists

Florida’s tourism-marketing agency has started to reach out to Canada and England while continuing to focus initial marketing efforts on Floridians and East Coast residents as the travel industry tries to rebound amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Visit Florida President and CEO Dana Young said the taxpayer-funded organization has started a campaign with The Weather Network, a Canadian English-language weather channel, and co-hosted a five-day virtual “TTG Florida Fest” this month with the travel industry newspaper TTG Media, trying to position the state for when travel by foreign tourists resumes.

“Not only are we working on in-state travel, domestic travel, we’re also starting to dip our toes into international travel so that we can take advantage of the competitive advantage that we have right now,” Young said Wednesday during a video conference call with members of the Visit Florida Executive Committee.

The TTG Florida Fest event, which attracted about 400 travel agents and tour operators in the United Kingdom, included panel discussions and classes about aspects of Florida, such as potential wilderness adventures.

Young said Florida is “one of the very few destinations in the world that are doing anything in the international sphere. And certainly, one of the only states that’s marketing right now outside of its own borders.”

The agency is trying to reinstall confidence in travelers after the pandemic cut tourism in the state by 60.5% in the second quarter of this year.

At the start of October, Visit Florida expanded a $13 million marketing effort toward East Coast regions considered short drives or flights to Florida. The marketing effort began a month earlier with a campaign to get Floridians to explore the state after being locked down because of the pandemic.