Visit Florida offers all Florida tourism businesses free web listings

Visit Florida, the state’s official tourism marketing organization, has launched a new initiative offering all Florida tourism businesses the opportunity to be listed for free on its www.visitflorida.com website.

Visit Florida announced the offer July 9 in light of the impact from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on Florida’s tourism industry.

“This is a win-win for our visitors and the Florida tourism industry,” said Ed Fouche, chairman of the Visit Florida board of directors. “We know that the best way to support Florida tourism businesses is to put their information in front of travelers interested in the Sunshine State, and this free marketing opportunity does just that.”

Tourism is Florida’s No. 1 industry, attracting more than 80 million annual visitors, resulting in over $60 billion in taxable sales revenue and employing more than 1 million Floridians.

As a public/private partnership, Visit Florida previously limited listings on the website to its more than 3,400 cooperative marketing partners, according to a Visit Florida release.

The website experienced record traffic in June with 719,070 visits, which represented a 46 percent increase over the same time last year.

In the markets where Visit Florida has been targeting its oil spill response advertising, traffic to the website is averaging 90 percent higher than in June 2009. Two Web pages activated since the oil spill have had a significant following: Florida Live generated 132,992 page views in June, and the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Update page attracted an additional 165,772 page views for the month.

Since the start of 2010, individual business listings on www.visitflorida.com have been viewed by more than 156,000 potential visitors every month.