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Hurricanes scaring seminars away

Fall is usually the height for corporate meetings in Tampa Bay, but a few groups don't want to take that risk.

By STEVE HUETTEL
Published November 10, 2005

Florida's fall meeting business may be losing its sizzle after back-to-back years of busy hurricane seasons in the Sunshine State.

September and November are traditionally strong months for corporate and group meetings in Florida and the Tampa Bay area.

But local hotels and tourism officials are seeing what could become a trend: groups moving events or not even considering the area, even though Tampa Bay escaped serious damage from the eight hurricanes that struck or brushed the state in the past two years.

The fall season, from September through December, is the slowest time of year for visitors to Pinellas County.

If the meeting business dries up, fall will drop off the charts for local tourism, said Timothy Bogott, chief executive of the TradeWinds Islands Resorts on St. Pete Beach.

"Will there be pent-up demand that comes at a different time of year?" he asks. "Or will we see the local economy changed in a dramatic way where the season goes to eight or nine months a year?"

The TradeWinds has received "several calls" from groups looking to move meetings they've booked to dates outside of next year's hurricane season, Bogott said.

In Hillsborough County, two small groups that hold meetings in the eastern United States each fall will move the events to spring to avoid Florida when hurricanes might threaten the state, said Karen Brand, spokeswoman for the Tampa Bay Convention & Visitors Bureau.

A corporation planning a meeting for 1,500 people next September was considering the Tampa Convention Center and a downtown hotel, she said.

On Oct. 25 - two days after Hurricane Wilma ripped through South Florida - the company told the bureau Florida was out of the running.

Even with the recent changes, the number of hotel room nights on the books for September 2006 is well ahead of the same month this year, Brand said. "We're still getting indications people want to meet in Florida and Tampa," she said.

Pinellas is having a good year for tourism, with nearly 4.2-million visitors through September - up 3.5 percent over the same period last year.

But the county has seen small year-to-year monthly declines since July. Tourism officials blame this year's outbreak of Red Tide for visitors staying away or cutting their vacations short.

Sales staff for the St. Petersburg/Clearwater Area Convention & Visitors Bureau will suggest that meeting planners concerned about hurricanes book events during other times of the year, said director Carole Ketterhagen.

Because the county doesn't have a large convention center like Tampa's, she said, Pinellas attracts smaller groups that can move meetings on shorter notice.

Steve Huettel can be reached at huettel@sptimes.com or 813 226-3384.

[Last modified November 10, 2005, 01:20:16]