Diversity & Inclusion Partner: Visit Tampa Bay
Visit Tampa Bay encourages all travellers to unlock sun, fun and culture in Florida’s Most diverse travel destination. As a not-for-profit corporation certified by Destinations International’s Destination Marketing Accreditation Program (DMAP) Visit Tampa Bay works with hundreds of partners to tell the world the powerful stories from across the destination. All work undertaken by Visit Tampa Bay is designed to reflect the community, stakeholders, and visitors whether this was through our own staff, our work in LGBTQ+, celebrating our Black or Cuban history, Autism-Friendly travel or creating specific accessibility guides, we are proud to share it with tour operators, travel agents and consumers from across the world.
The heart of Florida’s Gulf Coasts beats in Tampa Bay and you can find out more on Visit Tampa Bay and our work across diversity, inclusion and equality by going to visittampabay.com. Treasure awaits.
Diversity & Inclusion Partner: Visit Tampa Bay
Visit Tampa Bay encourages all travellers to unlock sun, fun and culture in Florida’s Most diverse travel destination. As a not-for-profit corporation certified by Destinations International’s Destination Marketing Accreditation Program (DMAP) Visit Tampa Bay works with hundreds of partners to tell the world the powerful stories from across the destination. All work undertaken by Visit Tampa Bay is designed to reflect the community, stakeholders, and visitors whether this was through our own staff, our work in LGBTQ+, celebrating our Black or Cuban history, Autism-Friendly travel or creating specific accessibility guides, we are proud to share it with tour operators, travel agents and consumers from across the world.
The heart of Florida’s Gulf Coasts beats in Tampa Bay and you can find out more on Visit Tampa Bay and our work across diversity, inclusion and equality by going to visittampabay.com. Treasure awaits.
Santiago C. Corrada, president and CEO, Visit Tampa Bay
What does diversity and inclusion mean to you/your brand in 2023?
Diversity and inclusion are at the heart of everything we do across our organisation and through the work we do in marketing and selling the destination. Visit Tampa Bay focuses on cultivating a unified message that showcases how Tampa Bay is open and all are welcome, no matter their age, gender, race, sex, religion, socio-economic background, or language. This statement supports our core mission, which has always been to inspire all travellers to love Tampa Bay.
What D&I initiatives do you currently have in place?
At Visit Tampa Bay, we see diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) from a holistic corporate position. Everything we do, from our board and executive team to our staff and our work, is designed to reflect our community and our visitors. The diversity of Tampa Bay is part of what makes us so special – from our Cuban, German, and Italian history in Ybor City to our Black history and our continually growing LGBTQ+ community – Tampa Bay is Tampa Bay because of the people who live, work, visit, and play here.
Our work is all about making sure these messages are spread as far and wide as possible by putting specific initiatives in place by working with Jamie Santillo and others on our accessibility content to truly understand the destination from a range of perspectives. Jamie is one of our Accessibility Ambassadors and she has been working with ourselves and our stakeholders for over a year now to highlight just how accessible Tampa Bay and our partners are for people with different disabilities as well as giving us a further understanding of what more we can all do. We also partnered with Chelsea Bear and took a deep dive into Disability Pride Month and we partner with Rachel Covello with OUTCOAST Gay Florida Travel continues to help us create our LGBTQ+ focused content and messaging. Other areas we are working in include Autism travel, avoiding sensory overload and looking at accessibility with our airport – Tampa International Airport (TPA
Why is it important to you to be a partner of the TTG Diversity and Inclusion in Travel programme?
We believe that travel should be accessible and inclusive for all and are immensely proud to be part of this programme for the second year. We want to continue to learn and understand from our travel industry partners, from the experts, to discuss the most effective practice, to highlight what we are already doing, and find out if we can improve. To share experiences and to work with TTG and the UK travel industry to ensure we continue to be the open, accessible, diverse and welcoming destination we strive to be.
We hope to be able to further develop diversity and inclusion across our organization and work, to continue to learn, and to ensure that the UK travel trade knows that we are welcome and accessible to all travellers and that if they have questions or specific requirements, they can come to us.
What advice would you give to other travel firms – small or large – starting out on the diversity, equity and inclusion journey?
Don’t be afraid to ask questions, to collaborate with experts and ambassadors, to learn from their experiences and the challenges they face, before making decisions accordingly. Also, be prepared for it to be a long journey – there is much work to be done to make this a fairer world and so you can’t think of it as an initiative or campaign, this must be a holistic approach across your company and the work you do.
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The heart of Florida’s Gulf Coasts beats in Tampa Bay and you can find out more on Visit Tampa Bay and our work across diversity, inclusion and equality by going to visittampabay.com.
Treasure awaits.
Place of registration: England and Wales.
Company number 08723341.
Registered address: 6th Floor, 2 London Wall Place, London EC2Y 5AU
