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Counties consider tourism merger

Hillsborough and Pinellas both want more tourists. So why not team up?

By Steve Huettel, Times Staff Writer
Published April 26, 2007

Pinellas has beaches, fishing and the Dali Museum. Hillsborough boasts Busch Gardens, Ybor City and the Florida Aquarium.

So why don't tourism promoters for the two counties team up to pitch the whole Tampa Bay area to vacationers in a big way?

Politics, branding strategy and maybe a little bad blood.

That may be about to change. Pinellas and Hillsborough tourism officials say they want to discuss jointly advertising the area with dollars from hotel taxes raised in their communities.

"People don't go to counties; they go to destinations," says Paul Catoe, chief executive of the Tampa Bay Convention & Visitors Bureau in Tampa. "To them, it's all one great big area."

Pinellas has been reluctant to join in. But the county's new tourism chief pledges to arrive with an open mind.

"We need to look at our options, and that ought to be on the table," says D.T. Minich, who takes over Monday as executive director of the St. Petersburg/Clearwater Area Convention & Visitors Bureau.

In the late 1990s, the bureaus and Busch Gardens sponsored a $1.1-million summer advertising blitz for the Tampa Bay area. Pinellas pulled out after two years because its $200,000 annual contribution wasn't bringing the county enough business.

Busch, which threw in $600,000 a year, also withdrew to refocus its advertising message before Wild Kingdom opened at Walt Disney World.

Tampa tourism officials were happy with the exposure their $200,000 a year bought. The program generated 140,000 calls and 5,000 hotel room nights.

The counties subsequently took on new brands. Pinellas advertised as St. Petersburg/Clearwater, Florida's Beach. The Hillsborough/Tampa bureau adopted the name "Tampa Bay."

Hillsborough's new regional name - and Web site photos of beaches outside the county - rankled Pinellas officials.

Officials from the counties gathered in 2001 to talk about combining efforts to sell the Tampa Bay area. They quickly identified problems.

Pinellas built a strong brand that officials weren't going to abandon. Politicians on both sides of the bay would be reluctant to spend hotel tax money from their county to send tourists to the other county.

A few, small cooperative efforts emerged. The bureaus split the cost of one-person offices in Chicago and Washington, D.C., to find customers for business meetings. They also contribute $75,000 each, along with Busch Gardens, for Web promotions with Travelocity between spring and summer peak seasons.

But their butter is spread on different bread. Three out of four Pinellas visitors are tourists. More than half of Hillsborough's are business travelers, many attending events at the Tampa Convention Center.

Pinellas raises more in hotel taxes and pours much more of that into advertising - more than $8.5-million this year compared with $1.6-million for Hillsborough. Both counties charge 5 percent on room charges, with revenues supporting tourist-related activities.

Some Pinellas businesses and politicians worry that a joint advertising campaign would benefit Hillsborough competitors, says Tim Bogott, president of the TradeWinds Island Resorts in St. Pete Beach.

"The concern on the political side is that because we have the beaches, we'd help Tampa more than they'd help us," says Bogott, a member of the Pinellas Tourist Development Council. Still, he supports talking with Hillsborough officials about the idea.

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

What convention and visitors bureaus spend

[Last modified April 25, 2007, 22:40:03]