Universal Orlando's Beth Fleeton with Paul Foster, TripCentral.ca
A full house at the annual Discover America day
David Lusvardi, Nevada Commission On Tourism
Mark O'Malley, senior advisor with Brand USA
Well it’s now officially official. The States are out to get us – in the nicest possible way.
At the recent Discover America event in YTO, reps from across the U.S. of A came out in droves to chat up the Canadian media and get the message out that the Canuck travel market is incredibly important to America.
Over lunch we were treated to a smorgasbord of statistics, including the fact that not only are we the #1 foreign market, but as of May we were up 6% year to date. We represent a full 1/3 of the entire U.S. international visitor numbers and, equally important, we come year round. As Mark O’Malley, senior advisor of Brand USA put it, “Canada is so critical to us,” and “We must work together to rekindle the world’s love affair with America.” Bring on the cross border shopping!
Also interesting was the presentation by event sponsor Danielle Courtney of Visit Orlando. Do you know that Orlando gets as many as 55 million visitors a year? That Visit Florida has opened an office in India? That conventions and meetings in Orlando are in the works until 2032?
Perhaps the nicest factoid of all didn’t really have anything to do with tourism. As part of the celebration of Orlando Makes Me Smile Day on Friday October 5th, Visit Orlando donated $10,000 to the cleft palate initiative at Toronto’s Sick Kids’ Hospital.
Now doesn’t that make you smile?
