Economic Impact and Visitor Tracking Report – Destination Management Organization – To Provide Economic Impact of Tourism and Visitors Profile Information for Findings of the Study Conducted in Fiscal Year 2024 – No Funding Required

2:00:32All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Thank you much. We finished we finished all the R's this morning, right? We can't. We have R thirty-seven.

2:00:45R thirty-seven. Oh. Adam's been hanging around all day.

2:00:53Ah yeah.

2:00:57And we were gonna make Mike Morris uh stay and write report on tourism activity in the l legislature. I think he's

2:01:05listening to us

2:01:05on Zoom. Oh is this what I've done?

2:01:08I was excited about the MST talk with uh with Parks.

2:01:14Yeah, not a problem. Adam Thomas Tours and Director of Florida Sports Coast for Pasco County. Uh as they're getting the uh the presentation uh pulled up, this is just a uh informational presentation only. This is um all your 2024 fiscal year data uh from the visitor economy and what we've been doing over the past year and the results of that. So uh over the past year the Florida Sports Coast uh team has seen remarkable growth. We hosted major youth amateur sporting events, conducted engagement, social Media

2:01:44tours and offered exceptional exceptional venues for small market conference, enhancing our profile and boosting the economy. Our achievements are an attribute to the valued support of community and industry partners across Pasco County. Together we have transformed our destination into a hub of activity and opportunity. I like to celebrate these accomplishments and look forward to continuing the success and collaboration of spirit that makes this all possible through this board and the Course Development Council. So I'm gonna I'm gonna move really quickly

2:02:14today. Um I but I I do want to stop on this slide real fast because this is our new tourism lexicon. This is how we're talking to people, this is our 30-second elevator pitch, this is how we're communicating to people, this is What I use at every conference and trade show that um that uh that I get the privilege to speaking uh at. So in summary, we're just a 30-minute drive from Tampa International Airport. Florida Sports Coast is a place that welcomes a unique mix of waterfront towns, rural

2:02:44attractions, and natural environments. From thrilling activities like ziplining and skydiving to more peaceful pursuits like scalloping, diving, and hot air balloon rides, Florida Sports Coast invites you to play the game your way. So it's a call to action. That call to action is to play the game your way. So we're launching a new marketing campaign called Discover What Moves You. And there you can discover what moves you with the experiences that we have to offer when we're telling our story to the uh to the consumer marketplace.

2:03:15So in twenty twenty four. No short of winning some awards, we uh we won two marketing awards, one uh one telly award and one communicator award for the golf is your playground video. So this is a video that we used last year into this year. It's an evergreen video that really highlights the all the many activities that you can do on our coastline from scalloping to fishing to boating to uh uh Paddleboarding, canoeing, anything that you could do on the coastline, zip line

2:03:45uh zip line, I'm sorry, uh wakeboarding, um anything that you can do on the coast and we won two awards for that. Uh we won a state award for the um Sports events, the Tampa Bay Christmas Invitational and the 2024 Florida's Best Sports Events for Small Market. This is an award that we won from the Florida Sports Foundation. It's a state award. This I'd like to recognize Consuelo Sanchez for her outstanding achievements

2:04:15in being awarded for the 2024 Florida Professional. Professional of the Year for Sports Tourism. She was also the Persons of the Year for Compete Diversity for Sports ETA. And she was also the 2024 Persons of the Year for the Women's and International Trade for the Tampa Bay Market. So she brought home the trifecta of awards for Pasco County for 2024. But I also like to recognize Kayla. Laysbrook as being one of the finalists for the 2024

2:04:46Florida's Florida's emerging leaders of Florida sports tourism.

2:04:50Wow.

2:04:52So we talk a lot about trade shows and really telling our community story and really showcasing what we do to the world and what we have to the world. And this is just a couple of the uh the shows that that we went to over the past year. Uh ITB is the largest travel and trade show in the world that gives us the opportunity to showcase our destination on the international stage, in particular to our German market uh visitors. Florida Huddle is another premier trade show that our tour operators and wholesalers from around the globe showcase the vast offerings of the Shun Sunshine

2:05:22State and that's what we're doing there. We're partnering with these tour operators to really Get to uh get the consumer marketplace to know who we are, what we are, and where we are. IPW this is a leading inbound travel trade show connecting US travel exhibitors with travel buyers and media uh media trade that promotes their project from products from around the world and last but not least Last month, Commissioner Oak Chairman Starkey and I and Consero Sanchez had the opportunity to go to Spain and attend

2:05:52the Sports and Events Europe, a B2B focused, workshop focused group on sports, travel, and meetings. FamTores, this is a big part of our initiative in our sales and our PR strategies. Um these are the four big fam tours that we normally do on an annual basis. We have a German operator fam tour that we brought in seven tour operators from the Central European market. So Germany Um uh Germany, uh Switzerland

2:06:22and Austria. Scalloping Fam Tour, we brought in about six influencers, travel influencers from around the country that are freelance writers, also writing for publications like Garden and Gun, Southern Living. These types of publications we just can't afford to buy into because they're anywhere from $30,000 to $45,000 a pop. And we just don't have the funding to do that. So we invite these freelancers in to actually tell our community story and tell our activities while they're in market. Our domestic trade fam

2:06:52tour, this was a co-op opportunity highlighting all there is in the Tampa Bay area from Florida Sports Coast to Tampa up to Crystal River and it was all everything outdoor emerging experiences. So international sports tourism is a big initiative of ours. And when we went to Spain, we met with these six groups that are coming to Saddlebrook this month on May 16th for the Express Conference International. These are

2:07:23all qualified sports events owners that are looking for Florida. Currently, they're not in the United States, and we want to be the first destination. they come to and for for uh for for their uh their clients. Again

2:07:36exciting that that that movie's gonna be great.

2:07:39Yes.

2:07:39What is the world breaking?

2:07:41Break dancing.

2:07:42What

2:07:42is it? Breakdancing.

2:07:44Wait, and did you see the other one on there? Jump rope? Yes, I wait, there's another one. What's the one that's calist no jump what's the one that was is it calisthenics or

2:07:54It's calisthenics. Yes, yes, ma'am, it's calisthenics. So it's jump it's jumping jacks, it's burpees, it's these

2:08:01We we go after unconventional tourism, so if underwater basket weaving was a was a sport, we would we would go after it. So these are just some of the uh the conferences that we're or the the the events that we're bringing into uh into Saddlebrook into Wesley Chapel into Pasco County over the next uh couple weeks to to really showcase not only Saddlebrook but the entire county uh what we have to offer. Marketing campaigns, these are one fun day video co-ops that we did with Visit Florida. We highlighted

2:08:32Dade City, Zephyrhills, Wesley Chapel, and New Port Richey highlighting what you can do there on one fun day. So there's lodging, there's attractions, there's eateries, there's eatertainment involved. So all these things make up Wesley Chapel, New Port Richey, Dade City, and Zephyrhills. And you can find them. These are also evergreen videos. that live not only on on our YouTube channel, but also on Visit Florida's YouTube channel as well. Our marketing campaigns, Expedia marketing campaigns. Our marketing campaigns are getting a little bit more sophisticated, right? When

2:09:02we're going out to market, we know who we're going to attract, who we're going to target. It's targeting the right person on the right, on the right media to get the right return on investment, which we're going to talk about in in just a second. But you can see the impressions that we're generating, the clicks and the hotel revenue, the hotel room nights, which we weren't tracking before. on our marketing campaigns. We are now tracking through our our partners with Adara, with um with Epsilon, with um uh

2:09:31Don't ask. With Zartico down to Saint Germain and Adara. So I'll just want to go back here for a second. This is a this is a Hopper. This is an international marketing campaign with Hopper. This is an online travel agency that we are that we are partnering with to actually redeem bookings in hotel rooms. So even though it's only a 204 room tail room night uh generation that's only for a couple weeks since the since the campaign. Yeah. And here's where the rubber meets the road on the marketing campaigns on our return on

2:10:01ad spend. So if you can see for the month the first or the second quarter of the year are our campaign with Expedia and our campaign with Adop uh with Adara. So every dollar that we spend in January gives us a return on ad spend of $17.44 back in marketing. It's the same with February, March, and the total. $15.91 back on uh the the revenue that's generated. And the revenue that's generated is also the revenue, the hotel revenue that's generated through these through these uh campaigns on the bookings.

2:10:34I just talked about how we measured. So here's some of the creative that that uh that we kind of push out. So this is New Port Richey obviously that gets broken down into our our brand new newsletter. So we s we started this newsletter back up um and reinstated It uh a few months ago, uh, as soon as uh we went out, subscribers have grown have have grown from under 500 to over a thousand. So these are opt-in subscribers that are going to our website, looking at

2:11:04the opt-in newsletter or or uh requesting a visitor's guide. These are qualified people that are trying to find out more about our destination so they can come back or or coming for the first time. Our social media is is going gangbusters. I just want to highlight real fast our Instagram feed. Um about eighteen months ago we were we were less than uh nine thousand followers on our a on our Instagram and I'm happy to uh to announce right now we're over fourteen thousand five hundred followers on our Instagram and counting. This is largely in part to

2:11:34our giveaways, our seasonal attractions, and uh um uh our our marketing efforts from from a marketing team. So here's just um some some big uh tournaments that that we held at Wiregrass Random Sports Campus. We had the Florida Senior Games, we had the U.S. Wheelchair Rugby National Championship that just took place last week. We had the North American Chinese Basketball Association Championship. This was a four-year project. They were supposed to come in uh uh right when the pandemic hit, right

2:12:04when COVID hit, they ended up canceling. came back last year in 2024 and this opens a a greater bigger door for the Asian market. So now we get a chance to talk to the Asian Federation for other sports and other um um um other uh um team to come into into into Pasco County.

2:12:25You see those links from the best

2:12:27here are some of our venues that we kinda just highlight, just moving along real quick, and we were asked to to show what the sports campus is, because this is your biggest investment from a boards perspective, this is your greatest asset from a tourism perspective. What uh what the sports campus generated in 2024. So we went from Nine events in twenty twenty three. To 68 events in 2024. We went from eleven thousand room nights in twenty twenty-three to to close to twenty-two thousand room nights in

2:12:57twenty twenty four.

2:12:58Thank goodness we made that switch.

2:13:00You made that switch. It was it was uh It was a a well-needed switch because now we're seeing the return on our investment of of that facility and with our

2:13:10Yeager didn't go through that, but we uh switched the management over there. Oh, I need to be able to do that. Oh,

2:13:16yes, ma'am. And so all of Pasco County sports events, we hosted over 122 events generating close to thirty-six thousand room nights for twenty twenty-four, generating an economic impact over $36 million and 3,100 135 teams, not individuals, these are teams that came to Pasco County last year.

2:13:39Here is an overview of the sports highlights. Again, North Chinese Basketball Championship, the Christmas Christmas Bay, Tampa Bay Christmas Invitational. This the Tampa Bay Christmas Invitational is something to really watch. I mean, you're talking about 3,200 rune nights that are coming in for a week-long period, creating over $3 million of economic impact. But these are all Division One, Division II. high school, college ready high school girls that are coming from across the country at the last week of December. So great time of

2:14:09the year uh and it's just really a a good event to come and watch. So the impact of Pasco County tourism for for for uh for twenty twenty four, you can see that we just we we've welcomed a little over one point four million visitors into into Pasco County, generating uh close to uh Close to about ten and a half thousand jobs uh that supported a little over three hundred million dollars in s in total wages and salaries. And the sales tax and taxes that were supported here and at local taxes supported through

2:14:39tourism related initiatives are over seventy-eight million dollars. So our direct spending that happened in 2024 was over seven hundred and fifty seven hundred six hundred and seventy-five thousand I'm sorry, million dollars in market and you can see where the categories of spend on accommodations, restaurant, grocery, shopping, entertainment, transportation, and other categories as well where where they're spending their money in market. Our occupancy, a little flat year over year. Our rate is is stabilized. Anything above 100 right now

2:15:10is great for us. When I first came on board back in 2017, our ADR was eighty-seven dollars over the course of the year. Average daily rate. Average daily rate. Yes, ma'am. And that is our revenue per available room. So every room that we're we're generating, we're generating about $70.40 per room for year. Right.

2:15:28Economic impact, again going back five years and you can see the uh the trend line of of where we're at today. I can tell you right now we're outpacing all of this for twenty twenty five. So we're we're looking to have another historic year in terms of visitors, room nights, uh direct spend and economic impact.

2:15:48With that, Madam Chair.

2:15:50Um do you recall the name of the new tennis coach that has now joined Zephyrhills? Uh it's um the Serena or Venus's coats.

2:16:00So it's Moratoglu. Yeah. It's it's the aca it's it's a Moratoglu Academy at Sarah Vandenberg Tennis Facility. So they just did a whole rebranding. Um Don't ask me what Murat Taglu's first name is. I can barely pronounce his last name. Yeah. Um but this is uh gonna be a game changer for us in Zephyrhills because they're now going to be bringing uh tennis athletes from around the world to Zephyrhills for training.

2:16:25Yeah, it's a big deal.

2:16:26It's bigger than IMG Tennis Academy.

2:16:28When I told my tennis friends um The the name they couldn't believe it. You know, that they they're down in Hillsborough and Penillas and Great stuff. Great stuff. Any questions for Adam? Commissioner Weightman.

2:16:40Yeah, Adam, I had asked you a couple of questions this morning. I thought we were gonna see some of some data presentations too, but So

2:16:46we sent that slide that you requested over to Colleen. I don't know if Tony, did you get the slide from Colleen? No. Alright.

2:16:58Well why are you checking that, Tony? Put those other slides up there.

2:17:01And then Tony, I sent you a picture. I sent you two, but I want the the one picture. Does that doesn't say Wikipedia?

2:17:10Uh I've talked before about pictures like Bora Bora for

2:17:12Speakers. My daughter stayed in those.

2:17:14So uh Keith loves us. Uh I I love it. Adam loves it too. Um but try to imagine the second lake at Sun West where you take And you put in those if you would go back to that previous cabinets, put those things around cabins in the water. You to talk about like trying to get a attention to Pasco County? You put those things out there. I don't I don't want anyone else like it. Um

2:17:37that's lovely right there.

2:17:38There's a covarier and there's like so there's the there's little you can make 'em fly overnight, accommodations, I think you you generate tremendous amount of money. There's enough space around where even you can put some uh container home type things right along the canal that's right there that could be a structure that's in the lake as well to kind of highlight stuff. You could even put that actually in the other part of Sun West as well. Now I want you to think if you're at Sun West with us the second bathroom we built, there's a little cove area. So picture you're looking at the little cove area. Try to imagine

2:18:08a concrete structure stage area which you probably put a cover over, etc. I want to get some professional look at it. And you kind of devi develop an amphitheater. There's an actu there's a natural amphitheater right there right now. Now you take that around, there's already there's already a walkway like you see right there with outlets to go through. You could make this such a concert venue. And I tell you I just came from the Country Thunder down at at the uh Raymond James and it wasn't the Rain Raymond James Stadium like I thought it was gonna be. It was out in a field. And that field was not well sold

2:18:39in the sense of it was dry, dust was flying like everywhere. But people sat out there and waited and waited for the music to play. Toward the end of the night it got good. The great thing is about this park is if you go back to that s those slides again please. I want to highlight where the peninsula is. There's an awesome little place that actually the guy who's run the Shrimp and Crab Festival for 10 years drew. He says, I'd love to have a pavilion out along that peninsula area. Which could be great for weddings.

2:19:06It's the uh and

2:19:07just other

2:19:07smaller

2:19:07events.

2:19:09That makes

2:19:09it worse. Go right yeah, so go right there. So this so this is the cove let's kinda look at the cove area there. So if you look at the concrete area with the rocks around it, then you look at the other side. It's kinda like mirrors the peninsula part. You can actually set yourself up to be on one side of it there, on the other side looking out all over the nature on the far side of the lake. Gorgeous setting. Christina and Keith and I were out there looking at it and It wouldn't take a lot of money to do do that. It wouldn't take a a ton of money to do this here, though musically you want to make sure you get it right. And and I've got a couple

2:19:40of people of professionals they want to come take a look at it. I've actually got a wedding planner in Saint Augustine that wants to come down and take a look at it for us. Uh

2:19:46there's there's a guy that lives in Starkey Ranch who does music for a lot of the processes. Okay. If you

2:19:51could hook him up, we'd love to bring him up to get his own.

2:19:55The Sunday night of Memorial Weekend at our at our market. He does the sound every year.

2:20:01Okay. So I mean the things we can do out there for tourism um and Adam, so that slide there was was the with the calculations wrong? Correct. All right. So the calculations then I don I don't I don't see it, but if it did get sent out? It it yes sir, I'm I'm Yeah. Okay, all right. So pull up the slide. So when I was on T D C and and Commissioner Starkey you probably go through it now. So take a look at the uh these this is the data from the tourist zones. So look at look at Northwest Pasco, thirty-three thousand dollars. Go

2:20:32down below at the southwest, 346,000.

2:20:34Yep.

2:20:35Go to the southwest quadrant, you're at 304,000 and northeast pasture where Nancy wants to keep it quiet is at 25,000. Try to imagine if we put that facility up there for the weddings, for the concerts, for the yurts, that would just drive, I think, international attention.

2:20:51Here's my challenge for you, Commissioner. Okay. Um and because I mentioned this to a few other people, because you know my son is in real estate development. And they actually received some packages from Pasco County that are of groups that are out shopping some big projects up in their Greenwich, Connecticut office. But what turns them away is the condition of the US-19 and the dilapidation and in the Just it's a

2:21:22mess. And so I think if we want to invest money up there, we have to clean up U S I D. It's it it it's third world.

2:21:30I I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you, Chris Starkey, I've been saying for a long, long time and you've seen me g get ordinances passed about the the panhandling going on, so that what goes on there drives the economy down. We don't have good hotels up there, we're gonna take it when we're looking at converting.

2:21:46Well I I'll tell you the the your your bigger problem comes with where the demographics go. When US nineteen and everything came along and you built a lot of two bedroom, two baths, the GM retirees, the Chrysler retirees, Ford retirees all come down, they built these two bedroom things. And what did you have to move in after that? We've gotta we've gotta promote what we have on our coast and the assets we've got first. That will elevate your demographic size.

2:22:07Well it's just that you gotta get the money people to invest in it and when they when they they shoot, I even had some folks in from uh big money wanting to do workforce housing and they won't go north of fifty

2:22:23Okay. And

2:22:23we'll go north of we won't go north of Trouble Creek.

2:22:26So think back to when we had NDP Lacrosse playing up at the Western Chapel District Park. Where were all the hotel nights? Down south in Tampa. We have very little benefit. When Groti's Ron built his hockey place up there, it elevated the game. When we built our sports ranch, elevated the game. Now you get more hotels than we've ever had before. You have to have the attractors coming in here. I'm telling you, as this place is now and and staff and this board, I want to thank you all, what we have done up at Sun West right

2:22:56now, that second trail around that lake, the trail around it, you've got an asset, there's nothing else like it in the world. If we get that uh canal dredgewood Sun West with boats coming in, and you can put three quarters of a mile of boat docks all the way down where people can come to a beach. Dalk your thing, have a good time, stay overnight in the thing, go to a wakeboard park, which Germans love that stuff, that's where we get the idea from. I mean, this thing here could elevate the whole region on the northwest. And that $33,000 number, if that gets up to a reasonable

2:23:27number, you will make the things, but you gotta put the attractors in. We're that close right now to get these things in. And we're not talking about big money to make it happen. Right now when we we put the big investments in, the rest of it's gonna be easy. But the attraction of those things, I I think is gonna blow tourism up on the west side, and that will lead to your better things as well. But you've got to have hotels. I can't have hotels that are I can't have hotels that dilapidated where I got homeless people, drug addict people living in there going through taking up space. I gotta get the good stuff in there, but I gotta have a reason why

2:23:57they're gonna command. They're looking for the stuff. And this is like part of it coming up there.

2:24:02Yeah. Okay, anything else?

2:24:05No, I'm just through I throw I've through what

2:24:07I'm

2:24:07saying.

2:24:07Oh yeah, we're on we're not on you, we're on him. That's funny. Okay, um uh I had a picture to show. Um No, not that one. No, remember I said not the wick that one. So So when we were um In Spain. The number one attraction in the area. was this hike called the Camonito del Rey. Um they did it in the rain. I was too terrified to go do it in the rain, so I

2:24:37canceled my ticket that day and I went on another day. But that is the hike there. That is a trail. That is um hammered into the side of that gorge. And um yeah, I did never I never did look over the edge, to tell you the truth. Um and I I I you have to hike down for like an hour to get to the drop off the start of that. You have to wear a a hard hat. There's other pictures, but um I I asked if I get scared can I can I quit? There's

2:25:08th there you're looking at some of the pictures, yeah. Oh no,

2:25:11I'd be like, No way.

2:25:13Well, if you look at that architectural look it says the most dangerous path in the world. But that was before they hammered the new one in. And and you can see most of these people are like hugging the rock and that would be me. um on the edge. But they don't tell you that when you get to this suspension bridge that's like two and a half hours into the hike. And so if you chicken out, you have to turn around, go back all by yourself. All through that. So I I made it through. I did hold the guide's hand walking across. that reach. But

2:25:43um this is the number one tourist attack shim in that in in that area. Fifteen hundred people a day are doing this hike. They did not plan on that.

2:25:52We could do that around the second lake in Sun West, right?

2:25:54Yeah. That's the Camonito Dolore. Okay. Any more questions for Adam?

2:26:01Thank you, Madam Chair.

2:26:02Okay, great job. Gosh, I just so glad that hopefully you get to keep your money. Uh hopefully the legislature doesn't mess that up, right? Okay, um I think we're done with all of that and we're on to Commissioner Oakley.