Visitors demand cultural experiences. That’s what surveys tell the Lee County Visitor & Convention Bureau, says Product Development Manger Nancy MacPhee.
“Two-thirds of visitors want a cultural experience when they're vacationing, and that's primary,” said MacPhee. “Our audience is vacationers … and arts and culture plays a big part in enhancing a vacationer's stay here.”
The VCB has created a place-making initiative to give visitors what they covet.
“A lot of experiences are driven by heritage, cultural,” MacPhee observed. “People want to know what went on here. What is the story of Fort Myers? What is the story of Sanibel?”
The Pine Island Pole Project, the Island Hopper Songwriter’s Fest and last year’s Art-ember are three of the place-making events the VCB has promoted throughout the United States and Europe.
MacPhee hopes arts organizations will collaborate with each other and the business community to create more of these recurring, neighborhood-specific cultural experiences.
“Our partners can be stronger if they work together and they present unique experiences that may need several of them to create it. We at the VCB want to talk about them,” MacPhee said. “We’re looking for opportunities like that.”
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The Lee County Visitor & Convention Bureau (VCB) conducts quarterly and annual Visitor Profile Reports to help it and local business establishments make data-based marketing decisions. The data for these is collected from surveys the VCB administers to visitors at area attractions, beaches, hotels and during meetings that are hosted locally.
The VCB builds and maintains year-round tourism in Lee County. To achieve this goal, the VCB works closely with the local industry to increase domestic and international visitation through integrated programs targeting key markets. Local tourism businesses are encouraged to actively participate in all of the programs and grass roots outreach efforts such as marketing meetings, media initiatives and trade/consumer shows.
By identifying and showcasing what makes the area special and different from all other sun and sand destinations, VCB sales, marketing, media relations and visitor services work together to deliver distinct and meaningful messaging to the traveling public. The VCB inspires and compels them to choose Lee County as their destination for vacation, meetings and group events.
Favorable visitor experiences make it more likely that a visitor will return and recommend the area as a travel destination to family and friends. In fact, the most recently quarterly visitor profile report found that 76 percent of visitors were influenced by the fact that there is “plenty to see and do” when they come to the area.
As product development manager, MacPhee works to identify opportunities that will induce people who have visited the area to return. It turns out that those are the same factors that influence people to come here in the first place.
“We know from the surveys that most people are coming for the beaches. Many of them are coming to visit friends and relatives. But while they're here, they want something to do, right?”
That includes unique art and cultural experiences.
Visitors Define Arts and Culture Broadly
“Arts and culture include anything from a museum that has an art exhibit in it to a performing arts venue,” MacPhee pointed out. “We have many theaters here, as well as venues that host musical performances such as symphonies. I also think there are a lot of art experiences that you can immerse yourself in on your own without going to a venue. A good example would be the Pine Island Pole Project.”
The Pine Island Poles has a 20-year tradition, but it took on new life following the devastation wrought by a string of hurricanes beginning with Ian in 2022 and continuing with hurricanes Helene and Milton.
“We have, I think, over 125 that have been repainted since the recent storms in partnership with the Pine Island Chamber and LCEC, who owns the poles,” noted MacPhee. “So it's fantastic to be able to drive out to Pine Island and along the way view these beautiful poles that have been painted by the community, primarily.”
For more on this, read Tara Callaghan’s “Pine Island’s painted utility poles honor community resilience and artistic spirit in Ian’s aftermath.”
“Bonita is another example of a fantastic place to go to see murals,” MacPhee said. “They're everywhere. They have a wonderful public arts program in Bonita.”
Bonita Springs calls its public art program “Art in the Sun Along Old 41,” and it includes a number of murals including Alex Nunez’s “My Beautiful Town,” which tracks the region's history from the time of the Calusa to present day.
“And then, of course, there’s downtown Fort Myers with its rich history and culture,” MacPhee added.
While Pine Island’s painted poles and the murals from Bonita to the Fort Myers River Basin provide unique artistic and cultural experiences, many more are interested in the region’s history.
“Anything we can use to help tell the story of either the history or the rich culture that we have here in Fort Myers is of interest to us at the VCB,” MacPhee said. “We know that Fort Myers and the island's beaches and neighborhoods that surround it inspire people. Many in our artistic community came here, if they didn't already live here, to be inspired and either write or paint or create because of it, and we really love to use that in our storytelling.”
VCB Needs Help Identifying Stories of interest to Visitors
MacPhee knows there are stories the VCB has yet to capture.
“We can't know about everybody,” she said. “So we encourage our partners to engage with us by having a presence on our website, sharing what they’re doing on social media and tagging us by using the hashtag Visit Fort Myers.”
The VCB’s marketing team monitors social media.
“We have a sales team that's on the road traveling,” MacPhee added. “They need to know what you're doing in your community to enhance a visitor's stay so that we can get them to come visit you."
Attractions and arts organizations can also promote themselves and their events in the VCB’s weekly newsletter, “What To Do the Week of …” and through it’s co-op advertising program. The latter allows partners to buy into a broad range of high-value media placements that they may not be able to secure on their own. By participating in a collaborative effort, partners benefit from expanded reach at a significantly reduced cost.
MacPhee encourages Lee County arts organizations to utilize the marketing tools the VCB has created to help them, such as its website, social media campaigns and the $25,000 in marketing grants it awards each spring.
The VCB marketing team would also love to brainstorm with arts organizations.
Marketing Grants and Assistance
The Visitor & Convention Bureau is funded by bed tax dollars. It uses those revenues in three ways.
“One is, of course, is for the beach and shoreline program. The second is in connection with the two spring training facilities that we have here in Lee County. And the third is for marketing.”
Marketing consumes the largest percentage of bed tax dollars.
“It’s over 53% of the tourist tax, and from that we allocate $800,000 a year to nonprofit event and attraction partners, and the bulk of our attraction partners are arts organizations,” MacPhee noted.
Each Lee County arts organization can apply in the spring for a $25,000 grant.
“There are some instances where we've allocated a little bit more if it's a unique project,” MacPhee clarified.
But there’s a catch. The grant has to be used for marketing outside Lee County.
“Because that's what the county ordinance says tourist tax is to be used for,” MacPhee explained. “We realize many of the arts organizations are struggling with operating costs, but while the grants cannot be used for that, it does allow smaller arts organizations the opportunity to ramp up by finding new audiences. Maybe they're not looking at Tampa or Naples for advertising for their attraction, but the funding that the Visitor and Convention Bureau provides allows them to perhaps extend their market and identify new audiences.”
Arts organizations do not have to go it alone. The VCB’s experienced marketing team is ready and eager to lend them a hand.
“The good thing about our program is that we work with them on their plan to identify and make sure that our marketing team is aligned with what they're doing,” MacPhee said. “Some of them have never considered digital marketing before. They just did print, print, print. In today's day and age, everybody's searching for experiences, events, vacations on their mobile device. So we provide a little bit of education, a little bit of mentoring as it comes to proper placements recognizing that many of these organizations are volunteer-led. We love that because those are the passionate people that are leading the charge, but they may not be marketers. So the Visitor and Convention Bureau is here, and whether you apply for funding or not through our program, you can have a listing on our website, which garners almost 400,000 views a month.”
Expanding the Field of Unique Cultural Experiences
While the VCB is pleased with the results of events like the Island Hopper Songwriter Fest, Music Walk, Art Walk and the area’s numerous outdoor art festivals, there’s plenty of room for expansion.
“We have a mural program that we would love to see expanded,” said MacPhee.
Working with the VCB, the Fort Myers Mural Society has placed history-based murals in nine neighborhoods throughout Lee County, including Sanibel, St. James City and downtown Fort Myers. MacPhee loves that the murals are interactive.
“You can get in and pose and take selfies and send a digital postcard to your friends and family.”
But the VCB’s overarching goal is to create a mural trail within Lee County that connects with those in other towns throughout the state.
“Visit Florida has a mural trail. We want to partner with them so that it's not just Fort Myers, the Fort Myers area, but the whole state of Florida and the arts that we can visitors who are interested in that,” said MacPhee.
Murals play an integral role in the VCB’s mission of enabling neighborhoods to research their history and share those stories with culturally minded visitors.
“A few years ago, we branded ‘Fort Myers Islands, Beaches and Neighborhoods’ as the way we promote ourselves outside of Fort Myers. 'Visit Fort Myers' is our handle for social purposes. But we recognize that we have many communities to talk about, not just the beach communities, and that they have unique stories. So we really are starting to look at placemaking initiatives where we can help communities uncover their unique story and then use it to create marketing plans for the future.”
MacPhee sees the culinary arts as perhaps the cultural experience with the largest potential for attracting new and returning visitors.
“We think we can host a culinary arts festival of sorts with some of our chefs at some of our hotels,” said MacPhee. “The Luminary has a beautiful workshop where they can host these types of experiences.”
The VCB is already moving in this direction.
“We just recently went to the Battery in Atlanta for a garden and gun initiative and we took Chef Melissa Talmadge with us. Now you may not think of that as art, but culinary arts are, in my mind, something that we need in order to lure people in and I believe it is an art.”
MacPhee’s right. Culinary arts are so much more than merely preparing and presenting food. Culinary artists use food prep and presentation as their medium for expressing feelings, values, cultural identity and stories to create unique cultural experiences that visitors enjoy and share with family and friends.
“We were the shrimp capital of the world,” MacPhee noted. “We have all kinds of local seafood.”
To promote that, the VCB just completed its inaugural “Savor the Shore” marketing campaign.
“And the locally sourcing piece, the farm-to-table agritourism, is a whole other avenue that we love to talk about.”
Said MacPhee, the VCB’s marketing team is resourceful and will use any good idea to help promote Lee County and its arts and cultural organizations and the events they produce.
“We're looking forward to seeing what our placemaking initiative uncovers as we move forward.”
New Emphasis on Arts and Culture Following Ian, Helene and Milton
The attraction of Lee County’s beaches understandably took a hit in the wake of the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Ian, Helene and Milton. But even before that, the VCB had placed greater emphasis on promoting this area’s art and culture.
“We use a lot of art imagery in our advertising,” MacPhee noted, “and most of that is destination beauty shots. We are working more with local artists to use them in our brand campaigns whenever we can. We have a vocal arts community, and they shared with us that they want to see more of them in what we do. So we've been doing it for a little while. We always can do a better job, of course. Again, we're a skeleton crew, so we really need them to come to us and create a listing on our website, tag us on social and attend our meetings and let us know how we can help them.”
MacPhee also pointed out that by tying our historical origins to their art and cultural programming will better enable organizations to appeal to the growing segment of heritage and cultural tourists.
Tourism the Backbone of Lee County’s Economy
The travel and tourism industry is one of the United States’ largest industries, generating $2.4 trillion in travel expenditures this past year.
Closer to home, tourism is one of the largest economic industries in Florida, with 142.9 million travelers visiting the Sunshine State in 2024. During their time here, visitors generated more than $127.7 billion in taxable sales. That amount of spending generated $36.9 billion in tax-related revenue to the state of Florida, which is spent on public necessities such as schools, transportation, museums and enhancing Florida’s offerings to entice even more visitors.
In Lee County, tourism supports 42,000 jobs. Lee County welcomed 3.2 million visitors in 2024. Collectively, they spent more than $3.1 billion while in our area.
“Not only do we benefit from the economic impact of the industry in dollars and cents, but we also benefit from the quality of life to which it contributes,” states the VCB on its website. “In essence, tourism is a tool for enhancing what we love about our region - from its ecological wonders to its history and culture.”
About the Lee County Visitor & Convention Bureau
Consistently recognized for its effective marketing efforts, the VCB has won awards including the coveted Hospitality & Sales Marketing Association (HSMAI) Adrian Award, Destiny Award, a Travel + Leisure Smitty and multiple Visit Florida Flagler Awards.
The VCB employs 33 full-time staffers along with management of more than 135 volunteers and internship opportunities. In addition, the VCB has representation in the Northeast, Midwest, Canada, United Kingdom and Germany. Contracted representatives supplement domestic and international efforts.
The organization consists of five main departments including:
- Administration
- Marketing & Promotions
- Domestic & International Sales
- Communications
- Visitor Services
All share a common mission “To be the best Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) in the United States.”
To achieve this goal, the VCB staff focuses on programs that are results-oriented, creative, reflective of superior customer service, and built on partnerships. The culture embodies unity, shared vision, empowerment, teamwork, passion, appreciation, a positive work environment, results-oriented performance and drive.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.