Visitors to Florida will soon be able to find tourism hotspots on their iPhones and Blackberries.
Visit Florida, the states public-private tourism marketing corporation, is developing a mobile Web site so that visitors can research the best beaches as they stroll through historic St. Augustine or compare hotel rates while waiting to board Space Mountain at Walt Disney World.
The site, which Visit Florida hopes to have ready by September, is another evolution in Visit Floridas attempt to harness emerging technology and social networks to attract tourists to the state. Tourism contributes $65 billion annually to Florida's economy.
The new mobile site will act as an entryway to Visit Florida services and information, much like the regular Visit Florida Web site, said Jill Stewart, Internet manager for Visit Florida. The mobile site gives Visit Florida a chance to appeal to tourists on the go, an all-important market in the mobile age.
There are more mobile users in the world than there are Internet users, Stewart said.
Right now, the Visit Florida Web site looks weird on mobile phones, with odd spacing and malfunctioning images. The new site will fix that and be easier to use.
We dont want it to look off, Stewart said.
Visit Florida has been expanding its online marketing campaigns.
The Share a Little Sunshine campaign was started to mobilize Floridians to boost the state tourism industry, and it has attracted a legion of 14,500 fans on Facebook since the campaign was started last year, said Kathy Torian, Visit Floridas Manager of Communications.
On the Share a Little Sunshine Web site, Floridians can send friends and family digital postcards of Florida tourist destinations, such as Jonathan Dickinson State Park in Hobe Sound. In return, the sender is entered into a competition for a prize, currently a Mazda MX-5 Miata, and the recipient is given a coupon for $25 off a Southwest Airlines flight to Florida.
The Share a Little Sunshine campaign includes a Facebook fan page where users can upload photos of state tourist destinations, and Visit Florida is turning to it as it seeks to battle bad press created by the oil spill in Gulf of Mexico.
Visit Florida launched Wednesday a new Web site to show tourists that the beaches are unsullied by the Gulf oil spill, which, contrary to some reports, has yet to reach the states shores.
The Florida Live webcam feature on Visit Floridas Web site plots out Florida beaches on a map and lets users post images showing that state beaches are open and clean. Its been using the photos from the Share a Little Sunshine fan page and streaming live webcam video.
Visit Florida has also asked Gov. Charlie Crist to secure it $34.75 million for an emergency marketing campaign to show beaches statewide and locally are free of oil.
Reach Alex Tiegen at Alex.Tiegen@gmail.com or (561) 329-5389.
