Welcome to Wherever You Are

We recently learned of the CVB’s new marketing campaign, “Kissimmee: The Heart of Florida.” As usual, we have questions and thoughts.

First, the easy stuff. It appears that the whole discussion of turning the tourism marketing over to a third party, leaving the CVB to focus on convention marketing has, in the words of our governor, “dropped like a rock.” Also, we’re somewhat amused by the decision to focus almost all of the marketing spending on web promotion, here in the Central Florida county with arguably the lowest level of high-tech employment. Hopefully the folks who are looking for Osceola County tourism information are web-savvy. Discuss among yourselves.

No, our main discussion today is about the brand. As far as tourism goes in Osceola County, Kissimmee is the brand. After all, it’s the Kissimmee Convention & Visitors Bureau. The website is www.floridakiss.com. The slogan is “Kissimmee: The Heart of Florida.”

But as the locals know, tourism has long since fled the City of Kissimmee. There are some hotels along 192 struggling to make it, but we’re not sure they’re catering to the tourist trade anyway. The only real remaining tourist destinations within the city boundaries are Lake Toho and Medieval Times. Everyone knows that the “power” in Osceola County tourism is West 192...the BeautiVacation district...where the money is going for any number of convention center projects.

So we have a tourism district using the brand of a dilapidated municipal business district while we have a county government that is turning their development attention to flashy projects on the other side of the county. How did we get here?

We’ll leave the “how” answer to the folks who like to tell stories about how they used to ride horses down the streets in downtown Kissimmee. The real question here is what do we do now. Tourism, like it or not, is Osceola County’s lifeblood. Tourism brings tax dollars. Tourism brings service level employment, which is our bread and butter. Tourism drives new construction, both for tourist related buildings and for housing for those service workers. And in Osceola County, Kissimmee is the tourism brand.

So, City of Kissimmee and West 192 area, we say, get together. Annex it. Annex the hell out of it. West 192 gets the brand they are already dependent on. Kissimmee gets tax dollars, a larger base to spread their operations across, and some amount of expertise in rebuilding and maintaining commercial corridors. Osceola County can go on to focusing on developing new communities on the east side of the county.

Know what else has a catchy ring to it? “Celebrate every day in Celebration.”