As the formal press conference at Visit Tampa Bay’s offices was about to wind down this past Monday, Santiago Corrada had one last thing to say to the assembled members of the media.
“There aren’t always opportunities or invitation to bid on a Super Bowl or a political convention or a World Cup, but there are events like this that bring international attention and visitors to our destination, and Tampa will take its rightful place among those well-known and highly visited destinations around the world.”
The recently hired head of Visit Tampa Bay, Tampa/Hillsborough County’s convention and visitors’ bureau, was talking about the splashiest get yet in his nascent tenure: the Indian International Film Awards, which are expected to bring tens of thousands of visitors and perhaps over $10 million in economic activity to the area next June.
Things seem to be on the ascendancy for Visit Tampa Bay, which just underwent a name change (from Tampa Bay & Company), announced a new branding campaign (“Unlock Tampa Bay: Treasure Awaits”), and acquired perhaps its best new weapon, the energetic and enthusiastic Corrada as its new president and CEO.
A week earlier in the same offices, the 49-year-old leader talked about his goals moving forward.
“The biggest challenge for us is name recognition,” he begins.
But a review of data collected by Alan Newman Research in conjunction with Tampa marketing firm Spark suggests that there are other challenges as well.
The survey of 1,000 leisure travelers from across the country placed Tampa dead last in “authenticity” among nine American cities considered competitors for the same tourists — trailing even Orlando, the home of Never Never Land. When those same consumers were given a word association test, Tampa ranked near the bottom when it came to the terms “hip,” “art”, “history” and “cultural.”
Hearing those results saddens La Gaceta editor Patrick Manteiga, who believes the agency should use local county funding set aside for historical renovation to develop cultural tourism in Ybor City.
“When you say Key West, you think of certain things,” Manteiga says. “If it’s St. Augustine, you think of certain things. When you say Orlando, you think of some other things. What is Tampa thought of?”
The Tampa native says he felt vindicated late last month after New York Magazine posted a Web-only travel spread entitled “Skip the Beach in Tampa” that featured references to restaurants and locales not often marketed to a national and international market. “After decades of suburban sprawl,” opined New York, “this Gulf Coast city has brought new life to its neglected center by fixing up the riverfront, repurposing abandoned spaces, and embracing its Cuban-American history.”
In a branding document issued by Spark earlier this year, the marketing agency wrote that Tampa/Hillsborough County could differentiate itself from Pinellas County “through defining specific segments of tourism offered, including eco-tourism, heritage tourism and history tourism.”
Corrada says that in the pitches he makes, Ybor is always mentioned because “it’d be stupid not to.” At a recent trade show in Las Vegas, he says, he and his colleagues spoke extensively about the area’s cultural legacy.
While Hillsborough County tries to find the elixir to draw more tourists and conventiongoers, their counterparts in Pinellas are riding the crest of two consecutive banner years. A record 5.4 million visitors spent time recreating in the county in 2012, 4 percent more than the previous record set in 2011.
David Downing, deputy director of Visit St. Pete/Clearwater, Pinellas’ convention and visitors’ bureau, gracefully says it’s the growth of Tampa Bay as an overall destination that counts, and that he and his counterparts across the Howard Frankland continue to work together on a number of projects.
“For us to think [that] some imaginary line separating Hillsborough from Pinellas means anything to visitors is a bit short-sighted,” he says, adding that visitors don’t care what side of the Bay they’re on. They just want a good experience. “So it makes sense in lots of arenas to promote the destination together.”
Both agencies do that in a number of ways, including jointly paying the salaries of their representatives in Chicago, New York and overseas bureaus.
“They’ve got the beaches, the great hotels, they’ve got the art and culture,” says Corrada of Pinellas, adding that the two counties complement each other like Miami and Miami Beach do in South Florida.
But obviously Tampa has some work to do, even after the much-hyped coming-out party that was the Republican National Convention, an event that Mayor Bob Buckhorn vowed would allow America and the world to see the Cigar City “dance like we’ve never danced before.”
Corrada says the residuals from the convention are still coming in. Siemens, the multinational engineering and electronics conglomerate, is booking an event next year that was inspired by an article in US Airways Magazine during the RNC.
But some people think the idea that Tampa suffers from a lack of name recognition is a stretch.
“I think we’re well-known,” says former Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio. “I think sometimes we’re more critical of ourselves than outsiders are, and you know, there’s nothing wrong with that.”
It should be noted that this is the second time in six years that Tampa’s tourist bureau has gone in for a rebrand. In 2007 the then Tampa Bay Convention and Visitors’ Bureau changed its name to Tampa Bay & Company, leading us to ask Corrada: Is too much emphais being put on brand?
“It’s a tool to sell your assets,” he responds, before seguing into a passionate embrace of the new logo, which shows the words “unlock” above a keyhole with two keys crossed beneath in the shape of a lock. “It’s cool. It’s hip. It’s different.”
Spark officials say the image of the keyhole can be thought of as a window on the destination.
Unfortunately some naysayers say it looks more like the warning label for poison control.
“People will second-guess anything you do, but when the majority of the people are showing excitement about it, unless they’re lying right to your face, I think it’s being very well-received,” assures Corrada.
The reaction is classic Santiago Corrada. The positive energy he emits makes you want to buy what he’s selling, despite what your brain might tell you to believe.
Perhaps his intense enthusiasm for Tampa comes from being an outsider. The Miami resident ventured into Tampa with his family to enjoy the rides at Busch Gardens for years, he says, but he didn’t really know the city until after he was hired by Mayor Iorio in March of 2004 to become her administrator of neighborhood services.
He came to her attention via her chief of staff, Darrell Smith, who had read about the work he was doing as a principal at Edison High School, located near Liberty City and Little Haiti in Miami, a school with the highest percentage of students who didn’t speak English in the Miami-Dade County school system.
Impressed, Iorio knew after their initial interview that he would fit in with her administration. As negotiations for a new Tampa Museum of Art grew complicated, Corrada was appointed to be her liaison to that board. Then it dawned on her that, with the city funding a number of non-profits, she needed a dependable presence on all of those boards, too. That person was Corrada.
He became the Mariano Rivera of the administration, shepherding the disputes over the Tampa Museum of Art, the problems at Lowry Park Zoo, the meltdown over Gasparilla, and, after John Moors resigned in 2010, taking over as head of the Convention Center. He was also the city’s point man during the 2009 Super Bowl.
Corrada says Iorio did him a great favor putting him in control of the convention center, where he first worked on the art of the deal.
“I enjoyed signing a contract. I enjoyed actually seeing dollars come in, as opposed to taxpayer dollars that went into this black hole and then came out supporting departments and salaries.”
He feels the experience helped him land his new gig, since it required him to foster relationships with Tampa Bay & Company as well as Hillsborough County officials.
That all-around knowledge and set of skills is what persuaded Bob Buckhorn to ask Corrada in 2011 if he wanted to stay on with the city in an elevated position — as his chief of staff, the highest position in city administration behind the mayor. During that time he got even more negotiating experience, working on contracts between the Host Committee and the Republican National Committee for the RNC.
Now he’s trying to convince groups with a slightly lower profile to hold their annual events at the convention center, groups like the Electrical Apparatus Service Association and the International Association for Food Protection.
But the work in getting Tampa’s good name out there never ends. In late May, New Yorker journalist George Packer published The Unwinding, a look at the decline of America since the late 1970s that features Tampa as one of its main offenders. But while Packer’s book is a commercial and critical success, lots of folks in Tampa who haven’t read the book still seem bothered about a review of it in the New York Times that said that the Tampa depicted by Packer “seems like hell on earth now.”
(At an appearance at the Oxford Exchange last month, Packer said of that line, “I winced because I knew it would be painful for people to hear,” and says that people should read the book and “tell me if I’ve done justice to Tampa or not. Tell me if this is a true and fair picture. If I’ve left things out, I’d like to know. I’m sure I have, because I’m an outsider, I don’t know the place the way you do. I tried to tell the stories that people told me.”)
Corrada has a response.
“I don’t know how much time that writer spent in Tampa enjoying what we have to offer, but you just spend some time on New Year’s Eve during the Outback Bowl and talk to the fans who come from the two teams involved, and you ask them whether this is hell on earth or is this paradise, and they’re talking to you on Dec. 31st? This is paradise on earth, not hell on earth.
“Those things don’t help and you have to do damage control and you have to overcome that stuff, and it’s really a shame, because I can give you hundreds of testimonials that would counter that reference that it’s hell on earth.”
So take that, New York Times.
This article appears in Jul 11-17, 2013.