Visit St. Pete/Clearwater is a department of Pinellas County Government and is the official tourism marketing and management organization for the St. Pete/Clearwater area. The organization works to enhance Pinellas County’s economy by increasing direct visitor expenditures and job development, training, and retention in the tourism industry.

Challenge: The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically impacted the economy, with arguably no industry being hit harder than the hospitality and tourism industry. As a new normal set in, the organization wanted to chart a path over the next 5 years for the future of Pinellas County’s tourism.

Solution: HCP Associates offered a comprehensive solution that incorporated several phases of the strategic planning process that included: initial departmental stakeholder meetings, community survey design planning, survey fielding, monitoring, analysis, reporting, and presenting, several community leadership stakeholders in hospitality, sports, film, arts, environmental, public administration, elected officials and external stakeholder media partners. The intent was to collect and summarize the current state of tourism across Pinellas County and develop a strategic plan that defined a series of primary objectives shared by all and synthesized into key performance indicators, which will be the basis for monitoring and reporting changes.