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Collier County approves $250,000 campaign to lure visitors back after red tide

People swim and lounge at Vanderbilt Beach in North Naples on Sept. 20, 2018. Collier County employees had to clean up dead fish from the beach because of red tide for the first time in at least three weeks on Thursday.

After months of persistent red tide littering beaches with rotting fish, scaring away would-be visitors, Collier County is pouring thousands of dollars into a marketing campaign in hopes of reeling tourists back in.

Commissioners on Tuesday unanimously approved the $250,000 plan, pitched by the county’s tourism bureau, to lure visitors back to Southwest Florida once red tide blooms finally dissipate.

Previously:Collier plans tourism marketing for when coast is clear

And:Hurricane Michael may affect red tide and blue-green algae. Here's how.

And:Red tide is clearing — but for how long?

County officials will tap into an emergency advertising fund for the “Beaches Are Open” and "Return to Paradise" marketing campaigns and place ads on travel websites, with news outlets and on social media platforms.

“This is the money that’s set aside for these purposes,” said Jack Wert, the county's tourism director, "much like we did, and you helped us through, post-Hurricane Irma with a similar move of funds.”

A look back:Hurricane Irma caused big drops in Collier County's tourism numbers

Commissioners on Tuesday also approved an application for a $70,000 tourism recovery grant from Visit Florida, the state's tourism marketing organization, to try to help reassure visitors that the coast is clear.

An additional $112,500 five-county regional grant, shared with Manatee, Sarasota, Lee and Charlotte counties, will help with a Google campaign to draw tourists back to Collier.

Overall, the idea of the campaign is to "mitigate the negative perception" and reassure potential visitors that they can come to Collier, Wert said.

" 'Our beaches are open' is the message, ‘return to paradise’ is the call to action," he said. 

The county also will enlist the services of a public relations firm to help combat the shadow that red tide has cast over Collier as a tourism destination. 

"One of their specialties is crisis management, crisis communications," Wert said. "And so they're going to help us overcome those negative stories."

Plans are also underway to send a local chef to New York to highlight Collier's seafood.

Wert said some of the campaign’s features, including radio spots in Northern markets and beach condition websites, have already been implemented.

"We are monitoring our beach conditions every single day on our website," he said. "There's a beach conditions page that sometimes gets updated several times a day."

Wert said he will lean on scientists and experts to gauge when red tide blooms have subsided sufficiently but said he hopes to begin the rest of the effort no later than the end of October or early November.

"We're really aiming to get people back here early, for season," he said. 

Although she voted to approve the plan, Commissioner Penny Taylor asked Wert to also promote the area's arts and culture scene and cautioned relying too heavily on local beaches.

"There's more to coming to Naples besides the beaches," she said. "We should always have the beaches there, but there needs to be more of a balance showing all the other things we have, so that in case things go south, there's other reasons people come."

Commissioner Andy Solis said stories of Collier's struggle with the most recent red tide spells have already spilled over into other countries.

"This is actually in the news in Europe," he said, referring to his law firm's European clients. "And it was in the news when I was there. And ... a lot of them are already making other plans."

More:What's turning Southwest Florida's shores brown? It's not red tide