by Glenn Tschimpke
Staff Writer
Jacksonville has an identity problem as a tourist destination site. For those living in town, it’s hard to imagine that anyone would have trouble identifying the largest city in the United States. For anyone living outside of Northeast Florida, the difference between Jacksonville, Fla. and Jacksonville, N.C. or Jacksonville, Ore. blurs. In fact, there are 12 municipalities in the United States that bear the name of the nation’s seventh president.
Making Jacksonville, Fla. stick out above the rest is the task of the Jacksonville and the Beaches Convention & Visitors Bureau. Whether it’s trying to establish in consumers’ minds that the only Jacksonville worth visiting is in Florida, or trying to peek out from under the shadow of the mouse in Orlando, or distinguishing the River City from the glittering spectacle of Miami’s South Beach, the CVB strives to attract tourists and visitors to a different kind of experience in Jacksonville.
In light of economic downturns and global events, the CVB has reassessed its strategies and priorities for the coming year and whittled them down to four:
• Develop a new brand for the CVB
• Improve the CVB website to include more interactive functions
• Co-op advertise with local tourism-related companies in other cities
• Elevate the community awareness on the value and impact of tourism.
The first step was to replace the CVB’s slogan, “What nature doesn’t provide, we do,” with something more dynamic.
“Fabulous Florida with a splash of Southern charm,” said CVB president Kitty Ratcliffe. “It will be on everything we do. It will communicate to you, first of all, that Jacksonville is in Florida. We won’t have to say Jacksonville, Fla. anymore. When you say Florida, there’s an automatic connotation that people think of warm weather and beaches and palm trees — all of those good things about Florida.
“What we wanted to do was let them know we were a little different than the rest of Florida,” she continued. “We’re not the mouse [Disney World] and this is not South Florida. This is not South New York and it’s not the Panhandle. It’s a very different part of Florida. That’s where we have a little bit of Southern charm and echo that this community is so aqua-centered, it became a splash of Southern charm.”
One way to promote the new brand is through the CVB’s website, which has been revamped with more interactive features. Potential visitors will have the ability to schedule golf tee-times or make restaurant reservations with the click of a mouse pointer. While the website is currently available only to its 325 member businesses, is should be available to the general public by the end of January.
To promote Northeast Florida in different markets, the CVB sponsors a number of co-op advertising campaigns with local tourism-related businesses like the Adam’s Mark Hotel, the Sea Turtle Inn, Palm Coast Resort and Amelia Island. Last year, the CVB ran a newspaper insert in 13 Southeastern cities not in Florida, touting local amenities and bolstered the effort with radio support.
One challenge for Ratcliffe is to convince the locals that attracting people to town who are willing to spend money is a good thing.
“We really get overshadowed,” said Ratcliffe. “So many people in this community think, because when they think tourism in Florida, they think Orlando, Disney. So they think we can’t possibly be a tourism destination and they don’t really understand how many people are employed in that industry in this community and what an impact that has in this community.”
Instead of trying to wrench tourists from the obvious appeal of Orlando or South Florida, Ratcliffe and her employees concentrate on bringing in a different kind of traveler.
“We don’t compete against Disney,” she conceded. “A non-Florida resident is going to bring their family to Orlando for a vacation and go to all the theme parks. They plan for that. They stay for that. That’s a big deal to them.”
Instead, the CVB focuses on certain regions and certain demographics for potential Jacksonville visitors. Not everyone can afford to tour the theme parks in Orlando several times a year. Not everyone wants to.
“We’re a destination from a family perspective that we can draw from, on a regional basis, anything from up to about 500 miles where people can drive their families here,” said Ratcliffe. “There are a lot of very affordable attractions and things for families to do in the area, great climate and a beach that Orlando doesn’t have. We become a very affordable family vacation destination that’s an entirely different experience than Orlando. It’s something that people can do regularly. They can do it every year or every other year versus the big Orlando thing. We don’t consider ourselves competition for them nor do we consider them competition for us.”
Ratcliffe listed the Jacksonville Zoo, Adventure Landing, the Museum of Science and History, the Cummer Museum, dozens of golf courses, the beach, the Timucuan National Preserve and St. Augustine as a few of the attractions Northeast Florida has to offer.
Not only is Jacksonville marketed to people within a day’s drive, Ratcliffe said certain key markets in Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee are being examined as well as mid-Atlantic states like Maryland, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
“Our market is probably more expansive than people think it is,” she said. “The average person in Jacksonville probably doesn’t realize that we have as many visitors coming from as many diverse places as we do.”