Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has scared off millions of dollars worth of business from his state with his extremist, bigoted agenda.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has scared off millions of dollars worth of business from his state with his extremist, bigoted agenda.

  • JaysynOP
    37•1 year ago

    One: The 2024 National Family and Community Engagement and Community Schools Conference: 2,000 attendees with accompanying hotel rooms. The organizer worried attendees would refuse to come to Florida.

    Two: Supreme Council of America Inc., Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite Masons: 855 hotel rooms.

    Three: American Specialty Toy Retailing Association, 3,000 people, and hotel rooms now going to Milwaukee, citing the political climate in Florida.

    • @gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
      37•1 year ago

      The original report this is citing sounds brutal

      The list was compiled by Visit Lauderdale, formerly known as the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau.

      Broward’s tourism arm said the lost conventions could have brought hotel stays to Fort Lauderdale and its surrounding cities, which also meant money spent on restaurants and attractions.

      “We lost this program due to political climate,” according to a Visit Lauderdale spreadsheet listing the decision of the Supreme Council of America Inc., Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite Masons to cancel their convention — and 855 rooms — in August 2024.

      “We were so close on this one,” reads the notes on the entry for the 2024 National Family and Community Engagement and Community Schools Conference, which needed more than 2,000 rooms and has bailed. “But, group decided to pull out of Florida due to concerns about what the Governor is doing in the education/schools and that he will likely run in 2024. They do not want to lose attendees due to this.”

      I’m reading between the lines a little bit here, but I’m pretty sure that spreadsheet/list the Sun Sentinel is referencing was like an internal document they weren’t planning to publish but handed over to the Sun because they’re so pissed off about how their local economy has been trashed (like, I just spent some time searching around Visit Lauderdale’s website and I couldn’t find anything like what the Sun describes available for the public).

      Can you imagine how pissed off an official tourism bureau has to be to leak bad news to a local newspaper? That just does not ever happen.

      • JaysynOP
        10•1 year ago

        You know you’re a shit conservative when you lose the Masons.

    • @Fylkir
      10•1 year ago

      Florida wasn’t a good spot for conventions anyways, geographically speaking.

      • @Rufio@lemm.ee
        10•1 year ago

        It’s an attractive location during the winter because of the warm climate, that’s pretty much it, but in terms of being a accessible location, yeah it’s going to be out of the way for a lot of people considering it’s in one of the four corners of the country.

        Historically, Florida is the 2nd most visited state in the US, and a surprisingly small percentage of those people are visiting for Disney World. Seems like this is rapidly changing because of how toxic the politics are there, but if we put all that aside, there are legit reasons why it’s such a hotbed for tourism, so it would make sense why conventions would be booked here despite being a poor choice geographically.

        • @Fylkir
          1•1 year ago

          The arguments for Florida travel seem more like an argument for Florida vacations. When I go to a convention, I don’t much care if Disney is there or whatever. I’m there for the convention.

      • JaysynOP
        7•1 year ago

        That doesn’t even make any sense. As long as you have airport access, geographics barely matter to a convention that is held indoors.

        If you want warm weather, beaches & real theme parks within driving distance & cheaper than California & Hawaii, Florida is (was) the place to go.

        • @Fylkir
          1•1 year ago

          As long as you have airport access, geographics barely matter to a convention that is held indoors.

          It matters a lot when you consider that air travel costs time and money. Assuming someone’s not profiting in some way off the convention (either as a vendor at a fan convention or networking at a business convention), distance matters a whole lot to their choice to go to that convention. If it’s a fan-con and not a super niche one, people will simply go to their nearest con unless given a compelling reason to go to Florida.

          On the anime con side of things, Florida’s largest con is Metrocon with a paltry 10000, which would be the 3rd or 4th largest convention in a state like Illinois.

        • @FylkirEnglish
          1•1 year ago

          Oh yeah. It was a huge benefit for Florida. Florida might’ve had a great convention center, but I still maintain that if conventions moved somewhere a bit more central they’d be able to grow more.