Jan. 02–Florida and the First Coast experienced another year of record-breaking tourist visits in 2018, keeping pace with the last half-decade of record-setting visitation numbers.
Some figures still need to be collected in the last quarter of 2018, but the first three reporting quarters showed new high levels of tourism. Visit Florida, the state's tourism bureau, reported the first nine months of 2018 had more visitors coming to the Sunshine State than ever before, with that period seeing a 6.7 percentage point increase over 2017. That accounts for 95.8 million tourists visiting Florida between January through September.
Local numbers of visitors on the First Coast were also up in never-before-seen levels. Tourism officials in Duval, St. Johns and Nassau counties all saw record tourism figures this year.
Local tourism officials use hotel occupancy rates as their main indicator for visitation figures as conducted by Smith Travel research figures.
Duval County and Visit Jacksonville officials saw a 75.1 percent hotel occupancy rate through September, a 1.9 percent increase for the same period in 2017. The average daily rate was $96.92 per room, which was a 5.3 percent increase from 2017, and the revenue generated per available room was $72.80, a 7.3 percent increase over the year before.
The Amelia Island Convention and Visitors Bureau also enjoyed a robust year. The agency provided figures through November which shows occupancy rate was 74.9 percent, a 0.8 percentage point increase over the year before. The average daily rate was $240.42, up by 6.7 percentage points over a year ago. Revenue per available room came in at $180.16, an increase of 7.7 percentage points from a year ago.
The St. Augustine, Ponte Vedra and The Beaches Convention & Visitors Bureau recorded a 67 percent occupancy rate in those local hotels with an average daily rate of $139.92 and revenue per available room at $93.26. All of those figures are records. There also was a 3 percent increase in hotel rooms in St. Johns County due to more facilities opening, and that corresponded to a jump in demand to the tune of 3.8 percent.
Michael Corrigan, president of Visit Jacksonville, said an upbeat economy is driving much of the positive tourism scene. He also said Visit Jacksonville has added different marketing approaches in addition to traditional fixtures such as print and internet staples.
"We continue to focus on marketing cities that have direct flights to Jacksonville," Corrigan said.
"But the biggest change this year — and we're seeing it in the results — is that we began to use 'influencers' particularly in social media," said Corrigan, who moved from Duval County tax collector to the tourism bureau in May, filling the shoes of Paul Astleford who retired.
A social media "influencer" can be someone on Facebook or Twitter or any other platform with hundreds of thousands of followers. Corrigan said they specifically targeted some of those influencers by either directly marketing on their format or even paying some of them to visit Jacksonville.
"It seems to be paying off," Corrigan said. "These are people that we purposefully bring them in to show them what Jacksonville has to offer. These people may not have known about Jacksonville and were not planning to come to Jacksonville."
In turn, when an "influencer" gets a taste of Jacksonville, they start communicating about it on their social media platform and pique the interest of their followers in Jacksonville.
Gil Langley, president of the Amelia Island Convention & Visitors Bureau, said his agency is thrilled with the 2017 numbers. But the marketing shift in Nassau County is heading more toward duration of stay at the coastal resorts.
"It's all about sustainability," Langley said, noting their marketing is targeted toward visitors from outside the region.
"It's a yield play. If we get someone from Jacksonville, they stay a shorter period of time and spend less money. Somebody from New York is going to stay longer and have a bigger ticket item," Langley said.
St. Johns County is generally relieved that they were not in the cross hairs of a hurricane for the first time in two years. Hurricane Matthew in 2016 damaged the historic district with intense flooding and Hurricane Irma in 2017 dampened tourism business, though for the year, St. Johns County still had record numbers in both of those years.
But St. Johns County also had a decrease in tourism marketing budget in the past year going from $5.2 million allotted by the County Commission in 2017 down to $4.6 million in 2018. The lack of hurricanes helped draw more people.
"It helped a lot," said Richard Goldman, president of the St. Augustine, Ponte Vedra and The Beaches Convention & Visitors Bureau. "Our hotels, if they're not actually damaged, they actually have a lot more occupancy due to evacuees and responders. But they're typically at lower rates.
"We were really happy to be back in the normal phase in 2018," Goldman said.
St. Johns County is adding more and more hotels and, given that, Goldman said he wouldn't be surprised to see record numbers continue for a while.
"We're really bullish on what can be done," Goldman said. "It's my job to be optimistic about these things. But I feel like we're out there moving the needle with business."
