Increased air traffic at Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport combined with a change in targeted marketing positively impacted local tourism.
But hoteliers report continued cancellations.
At a Dec. 14 meeting of the Manatee County Tourist Development Council at the Bradenton Area Convention Center, 1 Haben Blvd., Palmetto, SRQ executive vice president Mark Stuckey reported the airport will finish 2020 stronger than it started despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
The number of total passengers arriving at SRQ in October 2020 increased from the month prior.
At about 120,000 passengers, fewer than the 170,000-plus in October 2019, the number was about even with 2018 and nearly double the number arriving in September 2020.
In 2019, “we were the fastest growing airport in the entire nation” with a 43% growth over 2018, said Stuckey, SRQ’s chief of staff.
One of the major factors for SRQ’s success is its ability to keep charges to airlines down because the airport is debt-free and has been since 2014. Airlines “can fly in here and fly out at half the cost of some of the other airports,” council member Jack Rynerson said.
SRQ is “seeing more scheduled seats into and out of the market than ever before” with 422,000 seats already available for March 2021, Stuckey said.
That is about 30% more than March 2020, which Stuckey said had been “record-breaking” with 360,000 seats.
More than 35,000 of those seats per month can be attributed to the airport’s addition of Southwest Airlines. That’s 800,000-plus seats per year, not including seasonal routes, Stuckey noted.
On Feb. 14, 2021, Stuckey said, Southwest will begin direct service of eight daily flights between Sarasota and hubs at Baltimore-Washington, D.C., Chicago’s Midway, Houston Hobby and the Nashville, Tennessee, airport.
In March 2021, the airline is expected to add seasonal service to Indianapolis, Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio, Stuckey said.
“We fully expect them to continue adding destinations to their schedule once they are established here” but Southwest has not provided a timeline for those additions, he said Dec. 17 in a phone interview with The Islander.
Because Southwest’s stock designator is LUV, Stuckey said it seemed fitting to have the airline add services to SRQ on Valentine’s Day.
Air Tran Airlines operated at SRQ from 2004 until the airline was purchased by Southwest in 2012 and discontinued service at some airports, including SRQ, Stuckey said.
Since then, “there’s a lot of changes that have occurred to make our airport more attractive to Southwest,” he added.
So, when airline industry news earlier in 2020 indicated Southwest “saw a lot of debt in larger airports” where business travel alone could no longer support operations, the airline began opening “leisure routes,” Stuckey said, and SRQ made its case to be an added route for the airline.
With the addition of Southwest Airlines, SRQ has service by all domestic carriers but Spirit, a budget airline.
Targeted advertising delivers
“Prior to the pandemic, Florida tourism had just capped off almost a solid decade of record visitation,” Jen Carlisle, Visit Florida’s regional partnership manager for central Florida, said.
But with statewide tourism down during the first three quarters of 2020, her agency launched a recovery campaign in September, first targeting Floridians then broadening to 700 miles from the state.
The state’s official source for travel planning and marketing, Visit Florida doesn’t usually target marketing campaigns to Floridians, Carlisle said.
But research showed as people began considering travel during the COVID-19 pandemic, they felt safer closer to home, so the agency turned the marketing to “harness Florida pride.”
Carlisle said the desire to spend a lot of time outdoors was another key traveler sentiment indicated in Visit Florida’s research.
So, the Manatee County marketing highlighted outdoor activities popular on Anna Maria Island and beyond the beaches, like hiking in Robinson Preserve in Northwest Bradenton.
A 71% increase of nearly 9e million more visitors statewide in the third quarter over the second, Carlisle said, “aligned with the marketing campaigns.”
Numbers don’t lie
Indicating a positive impact of the Visit Florida ad campaigns, Anne Wittine of Research Data Services reported an 83.8% increase in visitors from within Florida in October 2020 compared to the same month in 2019 for the county.
Additionally, Wittine’s research showed a 19.2% increase in visitors from the Southeast for the same period.
All other origin markets showed a decrease in visitors to Manatee County, according to Wittine’s report.
Still, the economic impact of tourism increased in October 2020 compared to 2019, with 7.2% more visitors and a 9.9% increase in room nights booked.
But, Wittine cautioned, hotel and motel occupancy rates were down 6.3% compared to 2019, with many hoteliers reporting a correlation between the rising number of reported COVID-19 cases and an increase in reservation cancellations.
She emphasized the importance of the outdoor focus in Visit Florida’s campaign and also said her research indicated travelers want to know businesses will be open and activities available.
Vaccine impact
Since global borders closed in the spring due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a nearly 100% decrease in Canadian and European tourists, who typically stay the longest and spend the most money.
“The international market typically makes up about 15% of our visitors. In 2019, that market contributed over $200 million in economic impact on Manatee County. They stay longer and they spend more money than any other visitor,” said Kelly Clark, Bradenton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau director of marketing.
“Germans, together with Austrians and the Swiss, love to travel and we love to spend a lot of money,” Frankfurt, Germany-based Dorothea Hohn of Global Communication Experts said.
Now, with the development of vaccines, confidence in the ability to travel is rising and “Germans want to travel, and we are waiting in the wings,” she said.
In October, Hohn said, her company began a targeted marketing campaign highlighting all that Manatee County has to offer German travelers. When travel can resume, the area will be a destination at the forefront of their minds and the top of their lists.
Travel will have to wait until after the end of the country’s shutdown, which she said began Dec. 16 and continues through Jan. 10, 2021.
New TDC members sought
Manatee County is seeking applicants for two seats on its tourist development council.
One seat, currently held by Bradenton Mayor Wayne Poston, is reserved for a Bradenton official and for a term that expires June 30, 2024.
The second seat is for an owner, operator or general manager of a short-term rental accommodation subject to the resort tax. The term would end June 30, 2021.
The seat opened this month with the resignation of Bradenton Beach accommodation proprietor Barbara Baker, who announced her retirement, according to Nicholas Azzara, county information outreach manager, in a Dec. 18 email to The Islander.
Applicants must be registered voters and return applications, available at mymanatee.org, by Jan. 10, 2021.
The TDC currently includes Poston, Manatee County Commissioner Misty Servia who is chair, as well as vice-chairman Vernon DeSear, Ed Chiles, Jack Rynerson, Jiten Patel and Palmetto Mayor Shirley Groover Bryant.
The TDC makes recommendations to the Manatee County Board of County Commissioners regarding the operation of projects in the tourist development plan and how tourist development tax revenue may be spent.
For more information about the TDC, call Monica Luff at 941-729-9177 or email monica.luff@bacvb.com.
What is Visit Florida?
VISIT FLORIDA is the state’s official tourism marketing corporation, serving as Florida’s source for travel planning to visitors. VISIT FLORIDA is not a government agency, but rather a not-for-profit corporation created as a public/private partnership by the Florida Legislature in 1996.