Recently I was invited to tour the Punta Gorda / Charlotte Harbor area on a media trip arranged for me. It was a great experience and I learned a great deal.
First I really have to give credit to two people, Mary Huff and Jennifer Huber.
I was actually invited on a media tour by Mary Huff (working with Smith Advertising) last year, but I had to cancel at the last minute because I got sick. But Mary (@MaryHuff) was persistent and kept nudging me to reschedule. She never gave up and did a tremendous amount of work behind the scenes, juggling times and dates and locations for me to visit, while trying to pick places that would interest a writer/blogger focused on beaches and islands. If not for Mary’s persistence I might never have made the trip.
I met Jennifer Huber (@JenniferHuber) for several excellent meals. Jennifer is Tourism Public Relations Manager for the Charlotte Harbor Visitor’s Bureau. We first met over dinner at Peace River Seafood where she gave me lots of great information about the Punta Gorda area. Jennifer prepared a folder full of brochures, flyers, press releases, booklets, CD’s, and Google maps to help me get from one location to another. It must have been a lot of work putting all that info together.
Because of the Punta Gorda Block Party, many of the streets in the downtown area were closed to traffic. Jennifer personally led me on an alternate route to my evening cruise on the Kingfisher Fleet. Because my itinerary was rather tight, Jennifer kept in contact with the various locations, letting them know when I was running late and making sure I had enough time at each location and she introduced me to key people. Even though it was a weekend trip, Jennifer never rushed to get back to her own life–she made sure I had a comfortable and successful trip.
Bottom line: There is no way I could have covered so much ground in such a short period of time without the arrangements and follow-throughs by Mary and Jennifer.
What did I take away from this experience that I can use next time?
- Next time I’ll just stay at one hotel/resort. Having to pack up and move after one night is too much for a small-town Florida Cracker like me.
- I’ll schedule slightly fewer stops so I can spend more time at each.
- I need a pocket audio recorder so I don’t have to try to scribble notes when someone is giving me a ton of information, rapid-fire, in a 5 minute conversation.
- Eventually, I need a really light laptop with a card that allows me to always be connected to the internet so I don’t have to depend on finding a wireless hotspot. My iphone is nice (the GPS feature was invaluable), but isn’t really suitable for live blogging. And the camera on the iphone positively sucks. Could they make it any worse?
