Visit Florida Rolls Out New Travel Planning Resource

Visit Florida, the state’s official tourism marketing corporation, enhanced its consumer website, http://www.visitflorida.com/. The website includes blogs, image and video sharing and consumer comments.

Among the website’s features are a welcome video from Florida Governor Charlie Crist, real-time weather updates, events calendars, Florida travel videos, a personalized trip planner, e-magazines, travel guides and more. The site continues to offer special sections in German, Spanish, French, Portuguese and the Queen’s English.

Visit Florida enlisted the help of 10 Florida experts to share their perspectives on a variety of experiences in Florida. Each expert specializes in a different area, including arts and culture, boating and fishing, shopping and nightlife, beach and surf, family, authentic Florida, smart travel, golf, outdoors and adventure.

The experts, who live in Florida, host videos and write specialty blogs on the site. The unveiling of http://www.visitflorida.com/ comes on the heels of news that visitation is up in the Sunshine State.

With 21.1 million tourists traveling to Florida during the third quarter of 2007, visitation increased by 4.8 percent compared to the same period in 2006. Tourism is one of Florida’s top industries. In 2006 alone, $65 billion was generated from tourism-related expenditures.