At its Oct. 15 meeting, the Pinellas County Tourist Development Council received a destination metric update from Visit St. Pete-Clearwater, the region’s official tourism organization.
Team members from VSPC’s new marketing agency partner, the Chicago-based Envisionit, spoke about opportunities to grow the industry in the area.
VSPC president and CEO Brian Lowack said the organization recently hired Envisionit to handle media planning, advertising and brand strategy.
Jason Goldberg, Envisionit executive vice president and chief innovation officer, made some big-picture suggestions based on trend data. “We need to continue to get younger,” he said. “We need to look to more diverse audiences to really fuel and funnel growth.”
To exemplify, Goldberg discussed Pinellas’ rich arts, food and sports cultures. This allows the area to offer more than just a beach vacation, he explained.
Goldberg believes diversity is a positive for Generation Z travelers, or individuals born between approximately 1997 and 2012.
“They are seeking immersive cultural experiences,” he said. “They want to sample and understand what it means to be part of a community when they’re visiting it.”
Based on Future Partners data, the “highest-value travelers” for the area are affluent couples (and families) between the ages of 35 and 54 who live in the midwest, Goldberg said.
Looking towards the future, Goldberg added that there is an opportunity to attract Gen Z travelers as they begin to build their careers and start families.
He also stressed the significance of artificial intelligence and how it will play a role in the future of tourism.
“How we interact with the world is shifting right under our feet,” Goldberg said. “How we research, how we decide and where we even book and how we book is changing.”
These human behavior shifts need to be considered, he explained, or tourism destinations may fall behind.
The gross tourist development tax collection for the county this year so far is $87,724,063, which is a 5.23 percent decrease from 2024, said VSPC director of digital and data Eddie Kirsch.
Hurricanes Helene and Milton played a role, as some Pinellas municipalities are still recovering, he explained.
Kirsch also presented August data for local option taxes in multiple Pinellas communities. Clearwater and St. Petersburg collected the most taxes for the month this year.
The City of Clearwater received $1,885,906.17 while St. Petersburg collected $701,824.73. Both are increases from last year.
Dunedin also saw an increase in local option taxes in comparison to last August. This data shows that Pinellas’s tourism is improving despite the effects of the hurricanes, Kirsch said