Polk County Tourism and Sports Marketing (PCTSM) now offer travelers a comprehensive online reservation service through their destination website, www.VisitCentralFlorida.org. Travelers can use this new booking engine to plan and book a variety of central Florida products such as lodging, entertainment and ticketed attractions. “As vacation planning moves more and more towards an exclusively online experience, Polk County Tourism and Sports Marketing has followed the trend by offering online booking on their website,” explains Fay Downing, Marketing Manager of Polk County Tourism and Sports Marketing.
The booking engine is a solution developed and operated by travel technology company, Tripster. “Polk County represented a great opportunity for Tripster to further its relationship with the Florida tourism market,” states John Johnson, President of Tripster. “Since the successful launch of our own booking engine in Orlando, we have been eager to expand our services to neighboring markets where our system can provide a much needed solution for marketing organizations such as the Polk County Tourism and Sports Marketing organization,” added Johnson.
Polk County is centrally located near many major central Florida attractions such as Walt Disney World, SeaWorld and Universal Studios in Orlando, as well as Busch Gardens in Tampa, making it an efficient place to base a Central Florida vacation. Polk County also has many of its own attractions including Cypress Gardens amusement park, Fantasy of Flight, and the Polk Museum of Art, as well as a variety of hotels and vacation homes.
PCTSM will also utilize the booking engine through the County’s interactive visitor information center, called Polk Outpost 27, where an onsite agent will assist visitors with online lodging and attraction reservations. In addition, the sister website, www.CentralFloridaSports.com, will also provide a similar booking engine to accommodate reservation needs for visitors involved in sports and outdoor events within the County.
Tripster, a St Louis-based company, has provided similar solutions for lodging associations and marketing organizations in the Branson, Missouri; Eureka Springs, Arkansas; Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, Tennessee; and Orlando, Florida markets. It also operates its own consumer booking engines in each of those markets.