New Smyrna Beach wants you! For the past year, billboard advertisements touting New Smyrna Beach as “Orlando’s Best Beach” have been lining both I-95 and I-4 in Florida, to encourage nearby Orlando residents and visitors to make a trip to the beach.
But now the Southeast Volusia Advertising Authority, the organization behind the campaign, is changing and expanding their marketing focus to not only include Orlando, but also other areas of the country. The group is planning billboard campaigns in states as far north as Ohio, New York, and Massachusetts, in addition to a campaign a little closer to home here in Atlanta, Georgia.
They are hoping that by placing the billboard ads outside of Florida, they will attract visitors that will stay for at least a week, as opposed to just a weekend, as those that live in surrounding cities might. Tourism officials say Orlando residents come and stay in New Smyrna Beach for the weekends, but they want to attract visitors that will fill local hotel rooms during their lag times, typically Sunday through Thursday.
While local New Smyrna officials want local residents and visitors to come to their beaches, they say they were not very happy about the campaign touting New Smyrna Beach as “Orlando’s Best Beach” so they are glad to see it come to an end. Mayor Jim Hathaway says, “New Smyrna has its own identity and doesn’t need to be called ‘Orlando’s Best Beach.’ New Smyrna will go back to being New Smyrna again.”
The title comes from a reader survey in the Orlando Sentinel newspaper last year. New Smyrna Beach has been voted the #1 beach by Orlando Sentinel readers eight years in a row.