by Caroline Gabsewics
Staff Writer
The Jacksonville & the Beaches Convention and Visitors Bureau’s theme at their annual meeting was “Going from Good to Great” and they took the first step in following that theme when they announced their new name — Visit Jacksonville.
The renaming and rebranding effort was made to move Visit Jacksonville in a new direction and to continue the vision John Reyes — Visit Jacksonville’s president & CEO — has for Jacksonville, “Going from Good to Great.”
At the meeting Wednesday at the Osborn Center, Visit Jacksonville’s 2007-08 Chair Madeline Scales-Taylor made the announcement by first showing a 10-minute video that was a parody of NBC’s “The Office.” The video depicted the confusion the former name created for locals and visitors.
“We needed to take the next step,” said Reyes. “Visit Jacksonville tells people what they need to do.
“We want to make Jacksonville not just a great place to live, but also a great place to visit.”
Over the past year, the organization worked with its board of directors, industry partners, staff and other stakeholders to discuss the problems they were facing with the old name. Visit Jacksonville became the collective choice.
In addition to the name change, Visit Jacksonville also presented its new logo. Instead of “Jacksonville Where Florida Begins,” it’s now “Visit Jacksonville Where Florida Begins.” They also announced a new “Best of Florida” ad campaign that will run in national and international print, online and broadcast outlets and the plans for a new high-tech interactive Web site set for a January launch.
Past Chair of the Board of Directors and Executive Director of the Jacksonville Zoo & Gardens Dennis Pate gave the 300 in attendance the organization’s 2006-07 results.
“We had an event-filled, busy year,” he said. “The work done at the Zoo was just an example of what I wanted to bring to the CVB to help move it forward.”
Pate cited how the relationship between Visit Jacksonville and the Tourist Development Council had grown tremendously and Visit Jacksonville also saw an increase in ad money. In the past fiscal year, the organization experienced a 50 percent increase in advertising fulfillment, reaching more than 170,000 consumers. They also reached more than 93 million consumers through its advertising efforts.
Pate passed his position as chair of the board of directors on to Taylor who said Pate set a clear direction in leading the organization into the future.
“The theme from this event is ‘Going from Good to Great’ and with that in mind, we are not going to rest on our accomplishments. We are on our way to becoming a great organization,” said Scales-Taylor. “This (the new name) is the beginning of a new strategy to take it to the next level.”
Taylor said the five goals Visit Jacksonville will implement in 2007-08 are:
• Increase awareness, appreciation and support from the community for Visit Jacksonville and its tourism partners.
• Create destination tourism development initiatives and ensure public and private partner support.
• Increase funding for Visit Jacksonville marketing programs to be competitive or better than our competition.
• Identify, reposition, promote and extend the Jacksonville brand.
• Generate visitor demand strategies for the destination.
2006-07 tourist numbers
• Duval County - 8th most visited county in Florida
• Visitors generated a total economic impact of $8.4 billion
• 6 million passengers went through Jacksonville International Airport, an increase of 3.3 percent
• Northeast Florida, compared to the other seven regions in Florida, welcomed the highest percentage of business travelers at 27 percent.