Hotels & Hospitality | 2019 Sarasota County Destination Strategic Plan 2025 JLL Tourism & Destinations Practice DAN FENTON DAVID HOLDER BETHANIE DEROSE Executive Vice President Vice President Senior Associate +1 (408) 309-3450 +1 (315) 569-8908 +1 (609) 457-5361
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Table of Contents 5 | Executive Summary 9 | Background 15 | State of Sarasota County Tourism 27 | Destination Strategic Plan Priorities & Recommendations 57 | Direction of Visit Sarasota County 69 | Conclusion 71 | Appendix 4 Visit Sarasota: Destination Strategic Plan Priorities + Recommendations Visit Sarasota: Destination Strategic Plan Priorities + Recommendations 5 Section 1: Executive Summary Visit Sarasota County (VSC) recognizes that the future of Sarasota County depends on having an innovative strategic plan shaped by visitor research, analysis and thoughtful consideration of input from stakeholders and partners across the county. To accomplish this work, VSC partnered with JLL's Tourism practice, an international tourism and destinations consulting group, to assemble a comprehensive destination plan that would build off the efforts and accomplishments since the organization’s 2020 strategic planning initiative and identified goals. Specifically, by 2025, VSC seeks to: • Ensure funding and program development are aligned among VSC, its partners, government entities, non-profits and meets long-term goals of the community • Assess gaps in the tourism, sports, cultural infrastructure to identify potential new or enhanced tourism demand generators. • Recommend actions and activities to increase visitor flow across all segments (leisure, meetings, sports). • Review the effectiveness of VSC’s marketing programs and recommendations to improve these initiatives. Examine VSC impact compared to its direct competitors with their much larger budgets.