i talk to a lot of visitors, both people I know or complete strangers (I am a little chatty:roll
. Anyway, they always tell me the following reasons they chose this area:
1. Made vacation plans with family members who vacation here
2. Made vacation plans with friends who vacation here
3. Grew up in the southern states and have ben visiting the panhandle since they were small, sometimes generations visiting the area.
4. In the case of spring break, don't want to be the only family left behind in a zip code/school group when they all come here- oh the horrors! the kids would be ostracized.
5. Booked a stay in Destin or PCB, went for a sightseeing drive, and found 30A.
6. Southern Living reader. If Southern Living says to go somewhere, well then you better go there. Garden & Gun rapidly gaining on them with the young, hip, and wealthy group.
Most really all go back to word of mouth. Every single friend of ours that vacations here now, does so because we "introduced" them to the area years ago, and now they bring other people, and so on and so on. Making sure the visitors experiences WHILE THEY ARE HERE is the most important function of the TDC- because our visitors ARE the marketing tool.
I would really like to see figures of how many people were burning up the flight paths coming here from places like Chicago, DC, etc. Would that marketing money have been better spent on more events to get larger numbers our large regional markets? Why do we have to worry about getting visitors from big cities outside of the south?