The Visit Florida website greets readers with the line "Share what you love with those you love."
According to the state-funded tourism agency, "those you love" may no longer include LGBTQ tourists.
A week after quietly removing the LGBTQ section from the VisitFlorida.com website, Visit Florida made its first public comment on why the pages were taken down.
“It’s fairly simple,” Dana Young, CEO and president of Visit Florida, said at the tourism bureau’s board meeting on 28AUG. “Visit Florida is a taxpayer funded organization and, as such, Visit Florida, our marketing strategy, our materials and our content must align with the state."
Florida is a top destination for eastern Canadians because it’s close, warm, and surrounded by water. Alienating an affluent source market, not to mention the global optics of an exclusionary policy doesn’t align with 'fairly simple'—at least not to this trade publication.
As to LGBTQ content not aligning with the state, that's a message that smells of something we’d prefer to sidestep.
For at least a decade, Visit Florida has been actively marketing to the LGBTQ community.
The Visit Florida tourism page had previously featured information on attractions, beaches, destinations, and businesses welcoming LGBTQ travellers.
Skift reported on the page’s removal last week. At the time, Visit Florida would not comment.
Rachel Covello, publisher of the travel blog OutCoast, said Young's response "was a very surface, almost politically sounding" comment. Covello suggested that the question about why the content was intentionally removed remains unanswered.
"Return the Rainbow," a Change.org petition led by Covello, demands the restoration of the removed LGBTQ travel pages, the creation of an LGBTQ advisory board, and mandatory LGBTQ sensitivity training for "Visit Florida" staff.
In 2022, Governor Ron DeSantis signed a law banning discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools.
Young, a former state legislator, was chosen by DeSantis to lead the organization in 2019. According to reports, Visit Florida is a public-private partnership, and the state legislature has allocated USD$80 million to Visit Florida for the 2023-2024 fiscal year.
DeSantis claimed he only found out about the page removal after it had happened, Skift reports.
“I was aware after the fact. Our view as a state is we are the best place to visit, we’re welcome to all, but we’re not going to be segregating people by these different characteristics. That’s not how we’ve done business in any of things we’ve done,” he said. “I’m not sure how any of that stuff started or this. I’m aware of it now and I think nothing really changes and the fact is that Florida is going to remain a great place to be.”
In an interview last week, Will Seccombe, former CEO and president of Visit Florida, said, “We supported LGTBQ travel for a long time, from sponsoring events at ITB to content to marketing. It’s been built in there for a long time."
Stacy Ritter, CEO and president of Visit Lauderdale, responded on LinkedIn. “While Visit Florida removes its LGBTQ+ page from its website, Visit Lauderdale values, respects and see those from marginalized communities and commits to providing them a welcoming and inclusive experience," she wrote.
