The Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitors Bureau today announced its new brand as Visit Lauderdale with the destination tagline ‘Everyone Under the Sun,’ reflecting the diversity and welcoming nature of the Greater Fort Lauderdale region. The announcement comes during National Travel and Tourism Week, the time when destination marketing organizations share news about the power of travel and its positive impacts on local communities.
To beautifully illustrate the new brand, Visit Lauderdale commissioned internationally renowned airbrush artist Avi Ram, a Greater Fort Lauderdale resident, to paint a new ‘Everyone Under the Sun’ mural. The mural is on display at the entrance of the W Fort Lauderdale hotel. On special occasions, Ram is known for camouflaging human figures with body paint who then emerge to bring the art to life. An activation for the Visit Lauderdale brand launch featured painted models representing the area’s diverse community. The mural, which stands alone without the camouflaged figures, shows the beauty of Greater Fort Lauderdale and the face of Mother Nature welcoming all to experience the area’s natural beauty.
The brand launch also included the debut of the official Visit Lauderdale Everyone Under the Sun beer, crafted by Fort Lauderdale’s Gulf Stream Brewing Company. Flags displaying the new Visit Lauderdale logo are flying high from hotels, the Water Taxi, on airboats out in the Everglades and at many other Broward County locations.
“One of my goals when I took over as head of Broward tourism five years ago was to rebrand the organization and our destination to better support our community through tourism jobs and the positive economic impact it brings,” says Stacy Ritter, President and CEO of Visit Lauderdale. “We have an incredibly diverse and inclusive community that is welcoming to literally everyone under the sun, and that message is now infused into all of our marketing as we invite people to Visit Lauderdale.”
Tourism leaders will continue to focus their efforts on marketing the entire Greater Fort Lauderdale region as a top destination for travelers, meetings and convention attendees and sports groups – just with a new name. The name Visit Lauderdale went through extensive consumer focus group testing and consistently emerged as the favorite of people interested in Greater Fort Lauderdale area vacations. It will serve as a call to action in destination ads inviting people to Visit Lauderdale and experience not only the area’s beautiful beaches, but all the great people and places between the beaches and the Everglades.
“We have 31 municipalities in Broward County, all of which are unique and alive with their own culture, flavor and activities,” adds Ritter. “Our largest city, Fort Lauderdale, is just one of those 31 cities, but the name Lauderdale is the most recognizable. It helps us put the entire Broward County area on the map for visitors.”
Tourism leaders say the trend for destination marketing organizations is to use shorter names, often with the word ‘visit’ in the title because it says plainly that what their mission is – to encourage people to visit. Those visitors coming for vacations, conventions and sporting events leave lots of money in the community and support jobs.
