by Bailey White
Staff Writer
The pockets of the Jacksonville & the Beaches Convention and Visitors Bureau are just a little bit fatter these days.
The CVB received notice on Monday that it had been awarded two grants for a total of $24,500 from the Florida Commission on Tourism and its support organization, Visit Florida, which directs statewide tourism advertising, research, promotions and public relations.
The CVBgot a Minority Convention Grant of $22,000 and a Regional Marketing Grant worth $2,500.
“We’re thrilled that Visit Florida has awarded us two grants,” said CVB President Kathleen Ratcliffe. “Each of them are important markets to the area.”
Ratcliffe said the money from the Minority Convention fund will be used to host multicultural meeting planners in Jacksonville.
“We’re putting together familiarization trips to encourage them to select Jacksonville for their conventions,” she said. “We’ll fly them down, put them up in hotels and showcase different venues and visitor attractions.”
According to Ratcliffe, Jacksonville has attracted a number of minority conventions and the CVB will use the money to continue to promote Jacksonville as a destination for those events.
“We’ve had good success in that market,” said Ratcliffe. “We’ve had several national associations bring conventions here, including the National Association of Black Social Workers that had a convention here about a month and a half ago, and the National Association of Blacks in Criminal Justice, who’ll be bringing their convention back here in future years.”
Another $2,500 was awarded to the CVB through a regional marketing grant that will be used to promote the area’s natural attractions.
“This is a simple program that will create a regional Web page that will focus on eco tourism and nature heritage tourism,” said Ratcliffe. “There will be links to our Web site, as well as Web sites of our regional partners — St. Augustine’s Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Amelia Island Tourist Development Council and Clay County’s Tourist Development Council.
“Visit Florida has three grant programs a year,” Ratcliffe added. “One of them is only for rural counties, so we submitted applications for two of them back in April. The grant programs are very different, and but each are important to Jacksonville’s tourism development.”