The comeback kids: the speed with which Miami-Dade responded to the crisis of Sept. 11 is one reason the county's tourism industry leads the nation in recovery - The 2002 Mid-Year Beacon Forecast: Tourism and Hospitality

South Florida CEO, June, 2002 by J.P. Faber

THOUGH IT CAME LATE IN THE SEASON, the most dramatic marketing gesture by the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau appeared on the streets of New York City. For a single day in May, a glass booth containing sand, a tropical background and a bikini-clad sun bather greeted pedestrians in Times Square. New Yorkers grinned and waved -- and yearned just a little more, hopefully, for a slice of Miami paradise.

"I wish we had done it earlier in the season," says Bruce Turkel, whose ad agency Turkel Schwartz & Partners came up with the idea. "It created an enormous amount of publicity."

The surreal marketing ploy was something of a cherry atop one of the most effective campaigns ever launched by the GMCVB -- a $2.3 million-dollar counter-thrust to bring back visitors in the wake of the deadly Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

How badly did the terrorist attacks throttle Miami-Dade's visitor industry? In the last week of September, hotel occupancy in the county dropped almost 32 percent from its level a year before. Hotels that had been two-thirds full were suddenly two-thirds empty.

"I tell you what, it's been an unusual past 12 months," says Eli White, corporate vice president of sales and marketing for the Seaway Group, which owns the Biltmore, Alexander and David Williams hotels. "We had been expecting one of the best Septembers ever."

But it got worse. By late October, occupancy was down by a whopping 38 percent. And those who came were paying between 10 percent and 20 percent less for rooms than they had the year before. Hotel lobbies were vacant. Chic restaurants that had previously required reservations weeks in advance were seating anyone who showed up.

Then the cavalry arrived. Before September was over, Miami-Dade's tourism bureau had mounted a campaign to lure visitors back. "In two or three weeks we were in the market," says William Talbert, president and CEO of the GMCVB. "Only Vegas got there first, and only by a day."

Talbert, who was recently named Tourism Professional of the Year by Miami-Dade's Academy of Travel and Tourism, attributes much of the success of the bureau's efforts to the swiftness of its response -- and to the help it got from government and public agencies. "We knew we would be particularly challenged because 96 percent of our visitors come by air and this was an air disaster," says Talbert, whose bureau continues to monitor air traffic on a weekly basis.

"Our immediate response [to 9/11] was that we had 18 people in Manhattan, our staff and our partners, who were there on a selling mission. So our top priority was finding where everyone was, making sure they knew that we cared about them, and finding a way to get them back here as quickly as possible." Half the staff was flown back, the other half driven back in rental vans, all arriving in time for the bureau's Sept. 21 board meeting. It was then the bureau made the necessary adjustments to deal with the coming debacle.

"We completely redid our budget, knowing that our principal funding source -- the resort tax -- would be down," says Talbert. "We developed a budget that cut 21 percent out of our expenses, assuming revenues would be down 21 percent." Among the cuts were a hiring freeze, across-the-board salary cuts -- including 5 percent of Talbert's pay -- and elimination of all pension contributions and other employee benefits.

"We would all be a little lighter in the wallet, but everyone understood the point, that we wanted to structure our program for the year without having to continually discuss and review what were we going to do," says Talbert. "We wanted to make the decision quickly and put it in place so that we could focus all of our attention on selling the destination."

To boost those sales, Talbert spent the days before his board meeting lobbying other agencies to help fund an immediate, new marketing campaign. "I appeared before the Miami Beach City Commission, and also the Miami-Dade County Commission and on the 20th we pretty much secured $250,000 from Miami Beach, and then the county, that evening, allocated $500,000," says Talbert. Another piece -- $250,000 -- came from the Beacon Council, with smaller contributions from the Port of Miami and Miami International Airport. These funds combined with nearly $1 million in Bureau marketing dollars, some already in place, some derived from budget cuts in other areas.

With these funds, the bureau launched its "What Makes You Happy" campaign, hoping to present the right image for a traumatized nation. Tony Goldman, who came on board as the bureau's chairman in November, gives high grades to the campaign.

"I think the bureau responded magnificently," says Goldman. "We were very sensitive as to how you re-enter the market after a tragedy of that kind. You have to be very careful how you promote in a time of sorrow. We developed a program that was based on sensitivity to what a family needs in a time of trouble -- to be together. It's not about sex and nightlife. The tag line -- what makes you happy -- was a soft promote, to make people think about visiting friends, or just being together. It was very successful."