Thursday, May 25, 2017
It happened again this month. A series of seemingly random stimuli coalesced into a concept for y’all to consider in this edition of the Z-News. WARNING: This is a longish rant. If you'd rather listen than read, click HERE.
Stimuli One: When a crisis befalls your community or the media impugns your destination, the DMO confidently steps in to respond, right? Except when you are a County Department DMO that is required to run all such responses through a couple attorneys, the purchasing agent, an oversight Board and some low level administrators. It happened to a DMO in Florida last summer when an Atlanta TV station erroneously reported that flesh eating bacteria were washing ashore in that destination. Because of the draconian restrictions the County had laid on the DMO, a response took over a month to be mounted; a tad late to have any effect on public opinion.
Stimuli Two: Sticking with Florida, the Legislature there has passed a State budget that slashes the funding of Visit Florida from $78 million to $25 million and has placed draconian (there’s that word again) restrictions on how the agency functions day-to-day that even the paired down effort is doomed to failure.