Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Tampa, Pinellas visitors bureaus learn to play nice

By STEVE HUETTEL
Published February 13, 2006

They're not exactly the Hatfields and McCoys.

But the tourism marketing agencies for Pinellas and Hillsborough counties fight aggressively for vacationers, conventioneers and business meetings. And there have been hard feelings, like when the Tampa group changed its name to the Tampa Bay Convention & Visitors Bureau.

So it raised a few eyebrows last week when the two agencies said they might go in together to employ a convention and meeting salesperson based in the Washington area.

The idea is to share the cost of a staffer who would pitch the Tampa Bay area to meeting planners at the numerous associations in the nation's capital.

Tampa's main focus would be attracting big groups - 1,000 people or more - to the city's convention center, while Pinellas would be looking for smaller meetings for large hotels and resorts, said Carole Ketterhagen, director of the St. Petersburg/Clearwater Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Pinellas County's Tourist Development Council agreed Wednesday to give the idea a try for six months if a cost-sharing deal can be worked out. The Tampa agency is in "preliminary discussions" about the idea with their counterparts in Pinellas, a spokeswoman said.

"We're (usually) going to be as competitive as we can with each other," Ketterhagen said. "But there are times we cooperate."

[Last modified February 13, 2006, 00:45:19]