Susan Phillips, President & Chief Executive Officer, St. Augustine, Ponte Vedra & The Beaches Visitors & Convention Bureau
Susan Phillips, president and chief executive officer of the St. Augustine, Ponte Vedra & The Beaches Visitors & Convention Bureau, sits down with Invest: to discuss the current state of the local tourism and hospitality industry, how the region is bouncing back after a slight downturn, and more.
What achievements have defined the past 12 months for the St. Augustine, Ponte Vedra & The Beaches Visitors & Convention Bureau?
The St. Augustine, Ponte Vedra & The Beaches Visitors & Convention Bureau is doing its part to help impact our county’s economy. Two projects have been monumental for us in St. Johns County, one of which we just happened upon by sitting around a table and brainstorming. It was the creation of the first Black history app in the State of Florida. We realized we needed to take what is relevant to people and create a good way for them to engage with our history, specifically our rich Black history. We had not done that previously. When we started this project in March 2023, the goal was to have something by the end of the year. It was launched early 2024 following a beta test. At the same time, we had no idea that in late 2023 our County would have the opportunity to submit a proposal for Florida’s first Black history museum. That came about in November 2023 as the result of Black History Museum task force committee being appointed by Governor DeSantis, with the goal to have a recommendation for the site location to him by the end of June 2024. There is no money appropriated yet, but in May 2024, St. Johns County was recommended as the host and location for the first Black history museum in the State of Florida. The significance of that is that we are working on this project as a region, and not just as one county, because we feel it will positively impact all of northeast Florida and as well as the entire state of Florida. There are over 450 years of rich Black history, and we want to tell that story.
Additionally, we collect over $24 million each year in bed tax revenue. Despite an economic downturn in tourism over the past year, we have maintained the same level. With over 33,000 tourism-related jobs here in our County, we constantly have to look to the future and make sure we are keeping our hospitality professionals employed, and have great and fresh visitor experiences to keep bed tax dollars coming in.
What strategies are in place to attract visitors to the area?
We are looking for the higher-spend longer-stay visitor. There is always a delicate balance with tourism and ensuring that our residents are happy here with the quality of life. At the same time, our goal is to get the quality of people to visit and spend more money by staying and enjoying our experiences – not just coming in for the weekend. We are focusing on that balance. With such a popular and vibrant arts, culture and heritage community, one of our strategies is to encourage visitors to go outside of our historic district, where it can be busy, and experience some of our off-the-beaten path options in our agriculture and river region including our amazing hiking and biking trails.
What makes the area a popular tourism destination?
It certainly is our history. History is our mainstay and differentiates us from others. We also have 42 miles of pristine coastline which we promote, and which visitors enjoy throughout the year. But visitors also come here for our history and food. We have award-winning restaurants and recognized chefs, with influences of the past from a variety of different cultures which have created rich culinary experiences with historical backgrounds and recipes passed down throughout the years. People love and want that type of authenticity and uniqueness when they travel to new places.
We also have a tremendous, burgeoning, hot music scene. One of the things we are focused on is helping our people in the community make sure that we are recognized as one of the premier music tourism destinations. One of the trends we are seeing is gig travel. People want to travel to see their favorite musicians and performers in person and will look for destinations to travel to for these music experiences. When looking at the national acts brought into our music venues, we are fortunate to be able to have artists come here and offer this quality of music throughout the year.
In addition to that, we have the Sing Out Loud Festival in September, which is a slower month for travel to Florida’s Historic Coast. We have a month of free music and events throughout the area. There are some paid concerts, too, which benefit local charitable organizations. In addition to national talent, our community also showcases and amplifies our amazing local artists, not only during the Sing Out Loud Festival, but also throughout the year.
What notable collaborations exist between the St. Augustine, Ponte Vedra & The Beaches Visitors & Convention Bureau and the local industry to attract visitors?
The tourism and hospitality industry are great partners of ours. We love our tourism community and it’s our job to make sure they are successful. If they are successful, our destination will be successful. One of the things we saw last year was that the downturn was a bit of a re-set. We had been growing by 20%, 30% and 40% during the pandemic because our state was open for tourism. But, all of a sudden, people decided they would go to Europe or take a cruise since they had already visited Florida multiple times during the pandemic. Our visitation numbers began to decrease in April 2023 and it continued throughout the year. We quickly worked with our lodging, attractions, restaurants and retail shops to identify ways to turnaround the decline and utilized consumer research to guide us. In addition to our advertising campaign called “It’s About Time” which runs across all media platforms, we pivoted and added something specific for our attractions. The new stay and play campaign promotes all of our attractions and continues to be a successful addition to our multiple advertising and marketing campaigns.
