Tourism in the Gulf
By Martin Owen, founder of Owen Organization
It is said that if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. When it comes to attracting tourists, we want to be certain that they know exactly where they’re going—and why. It helps if we know where we are in the first place.
The northern part of the Gulf Coast actually extends from Texas, through Louisiana, Mississippi, South Alabama, and across the Florida Panhandle. Naturally it’s quite easy to place the Texas to South Alabama pieces as they’re easily identified by each state, but once in Florida, it becomes a bit tricky.
There are eight Northwest Florida counties that have a coastline, and each has a very different character and appeal to tourists in varying ways. The trouble is our visitors often get confused by where they actually are. I was told a few years ago that 22% of visitors to South Walton thought they were in Destin, which is in Okaloosa County. Okaloosa has for many years marketed itself as ‘The Emerald Coast,’ but a huge number of tourists and potential tourists consider that the Emerald Coast runs all the way from Pensacola, in the west, to Panama City, in the east, or even further, when it bumps up against the ‘Forgotten Coast’.
Along this almost 200 miles of sugar white sand and, yes, emerald green water are cities, towns, neighborhoods, communities, resorts, and beaches that have completely different characters. For visitors who are not familiar with the area, or even those who know parts of it, this can be very confusing, and by assuming it’s all the same, they can miss out on the potential for a wonderful vacation.
Why does it matter what to call this area? Well, tourism to this part of the world is not only big business, but it is vital to the residents as a source of jobs and personal income. Not only are the communities along the Gulf Coast competing with each other for tourists, but we are also competing with other areas of the state, county, and other countries. How we successfully market ourselves is what drives our economy.
Recently the eight coastal counties in Northwest Florida have been working together to establish a common image and brand that highlights the wide attractions of the coast, while allowing the individual counties and communities to express their own identities. The aim is to attract higher spending tourists outside the summer peak season. This doesn’t mean more tourists, it’s about spreading the visitors across the year and finding ones that will provide higher income and higher paying year round jobs.
As we mentioned last month, vacationers these days want experiences or more precisely, adventures. Now, what an adventure is to you may be different to my idea, of course. To some, it will be trying deep-sea fishing, while to others it may be trying a seafood menu that is new to them. To one family, it could be going on a dolphin encounter, to another, a walk on the beach. So, although the study is still going on, and it may be some time before we have a full campaign for the whole coast, or even parts of the coast, I think we can be certain that we’ll be looking at something that means more than ‘just’ lying on the beach!
In other news…
When was the last time you got lost on vacation and by accident found something really special? I know back in the days before GPS on my phone, I regularly misdirected myself, and as a result found a great restaurant (I found some awful ones too!). Or suddenly came round a corner to discover a magnificent view, or a hidden beach that few knew about. Now we have the benefit of ‘always on’ directions ensuring we get exactly where we want to go, on time. We’ve checked the reviews on the restaurant we’re going to, and looked at the menu so no surprises will be there. Lastly, we all have our phone cameras with us, and can take endless images, unlike in the past when you were lucky to have a camera, and invariably only so much film.
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want to lose my TripAdvisor reviews, my GPS, Uber and Lyft rides on demand or, more importantly, my phone camera to record all my memories. But sometimes, just sometimes, I have this urge to switch it off and let chance take over. I might even discover a whole new tourism destination. How about you?