Tour bookings pick up, but not for this year

ST. PETERSBURG -- A cautious "business is picking up" was the most frequently heard phrase Thursday at Florida Huddle, an annual industry trade show that drew to Tropicana Field 50 tour packagers who account for a third of the state's leisure travel business.

The consensus: Florida vacation bookings are on a sharp upswing, but not in numbers big enough -- or prices high enough -- to salvage the peak winter season. "Business is picking up, but it is still going to take a while to come back this winter," said Janine Dejannaro, marketing manager for Go Go Tours Worldwide, one of the nation's biggest tour operators.

"It's going to be a year or two years before our industry is fully recovered," said Eileen Forrow, director of sales for Visit Florida Inc., the state government's tourist marketing agency. "There is a worldwide recession out there. The exchange rates with Canada are killing us."

Pinellas County hosted the two-day travel market for the first time in the Huddle's 28 years and is bidding to bring the event back in 2006.

The wining and dining has been intense as local tourist industry leaders showcase their town. Wednesday night the sky over the city's downtown waterfront was crisscrossed by three dozen Hollywood-style searchlights welcoming delegates and 50 travel writers from 32 countries to the opening reception. Yet even practice runs didn't prevent one out-of-town charter bus driver from getting lost ferrying delegates around St. Petersburg's one-way streets. Thursday night they were to be toasted with a parade ending with a street party on a blocked-off Corey Avenue in St. Pete Beach.

The after-hours revelry helped industry executives temporarily forget how slowly their business is bouncing back from the recession and the terrorist attacks. The beginning of the peak winter tourist season is a week or two away in Central Florida. Yet vacationers who pay the highest hotel rates of the year only recently began responding to continued industry discounting and a huge advertising blitz. Obstacles range from the airlines flying at sharply reduced capacity to vacationers waiting until the week before they leave to book. On top of all that, industry leaders agree their big problem in North America is enjoying a mild winter.

"March is filling in," said Jack Guy, sales director of the Sheraton Sand Key in Clearwater. "But I'm still worried about February."

The United Kingdom is showing signs of life, but tourism from Germany is slipping. "Argentina is dead," said Jon Arthur, whose Coral Gables firm has represented Pinellas County in South America.

Meanwhile, Florida's big advertising blitz in the Northeast and Midwest has been matched by heightened spending from the cruise lines, Las Vegas and the Caribbean islands.

Travel industry mergers, cost cutting and layoffs that swept through the travel industry in Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany were evident at Huddle. Attendance was down 16 percent to 1,000, the lowest in five years. The number of tour operators dropped by 50 to 250.

"We ended up better than I feared," said Lynn Warren, vice president of International Productions, the Orlando company that stages Huddle.

While winter and spring were a top topic at Huddle, delegates were there to begin dealmaking for 2003. Hotels use tour operators and wholesalers to lower their risk by selling blocks of rooms at discounted rates a year or more in advance. That gives hotels guaranteed traffic without having to invest in marketing. Tour operators use the discounts to build packages that include air fare, car rentals and attractions tickets.

It doesn't always work to Florida's advantage. Many cost-conscious Canadians this year are opting for all-inclusive resorts in Mexico and the Caribbean.

"For $800 they can get a air fare and a week in a four-star property in Florida or the same thing elsewhere that includes all their meals," said Benoit Deshaies, president and chief executive of Americanada, a part of the Canadian Transat Group in Montreal.

Typically, resort areas that host Huddle get a 10 percent boost in tour operator business the following year. That's because the market is exposed to many packagers for the first time.

"It's particularly good we're having it this year," said Carole Ketterhagen, director of the St. Petersburg/Clearwater Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. She estimates Huddle delegates, who spent $1-million in Pinellas County this week, will bring $200-million in new tourist business to the market in 2003.

-- Mark Albright can be reached at albright@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8252.

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