Florida Offers Great Travel Destinations
by Scott A Sumner
www.golfingnews.ca
Above: Gaylord Palms Resort 4.5 acre indoor atrium
Each spring for the last three years I have attended the Travel South Showcase. This event gets together over 700 people in a trade show style show where the 12 southern US states promote tourism activities to their destinations. This year the event was held in Orlando, Florida at the beautiful Gaylord Palms Resort. This 1400 room facility features a 4.5 acre indoor atrium, a staff of 1500 people, 5 restaurants, large meeting areas and cost $450 million to construct. The rooms include 1 bedroom executive suites with an 8 place dining room table, a large bathroom and wet bar area overlooking the pool or atrium. This years event had 655 delegates from across the US, Canada and Europe. There were also 34 media in attendance including 11 from Canada. The annual Travel South Showcase includes tremendous meals and entertainment and has an economic impact of $750,000 on the area.
Usually there is a pre event before the showcase and this year included a trip to Daytona Beach. Daytona is a 1 hour drive from Orlando on the Atlantic ocean on the east coast, is 1 hour from the Kennedy Space Centre and 1 hour from St Augustine. Daytona Beach is
23 miles long and very wide. One of the first stops was at the World’s Largest Harley Davidson dealership.
“Destination Daytona is a marvelous Harley Davidson Showcase, a place to see and be seen especially at special events like bike week in the spring and Octoberfest in October. They have entertainment with a Coca Cola Pavilion through the events.You can also see them working on custom bikes,” said Sandy Lucania, Director of Travel Industry Travel for Daytona Convention Bureau. “ It is huge and they sell everything including clothing for your pets and even furniture!
They have a school for trades, a condo complex and a hotel.”
Above: World’s largest Harley Davidson Dealership Daytona
Destination Daytona is the largest Harley Davidson dealership on the planet and owned by Bruce Ross Meyers. He also has 4 dealerships in Fort Lauderdale, 2 in Daytona as well as Mississippi, Graceland and Boston. The Daytona store is 110,000 square feet and includes a cafe in the parts area. During bike week they sold 589 units and had 1300 in stock. People come here from everywhere in the world. Destination Daytona has shops across the street, a food court outside, the Coca Cola Pavilion and events are always going on. Inside the attractive building includes an escalator and elevator to the second floor!
In historic downtown Kissimmee it was fun to talk to Dale Parsons, architect and developer."My brother Ray and I are partners in this development called City Centre a 10 minute drive from the Disney theme parks. We assembled a city block over a 4 year period of
time and with cooperation from the city redeveloped the whole thing. The block is 300 by 300, a square football field in size. We are really the catalyst for individual entrepreneurs to come in and do their own business with retail, restaurants, a medical centre and condominiums,” said Dale Parsons. “ It has been good and received well. The residential sales are lower than we would have hoped for but the restaurant is dong very well. The condos sell for $300,000 to
700,000 which is a 15 to 20% drop in the last year. We build every unit custom from the wall for each person. The entire construction value is $50 million. We started before the downturn. Today you couldn’t have got financing.”
Above : Orlando’s Falcon Fire Golf Course is owned by a Sheik
During a break in the conference action it was fun to play Falcon's Fire, an 18 hole golf course adjacent to the Gaylord Palm Resort. This course and lots of adjacent land is owned by a Sheik from the middle east, is close to Disney and well used by Gaylord Palm Resort guests.
For $89 it includes town car transportation to the course, golf cart, range balls and 18 holes. We played in windy weather with Spence and Evan from Charleston, SC.
It was a great learning experience at Travel South. There is so much to
see in our world.
