Who is the VSC?

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  VISIT SARASOTA COUNTY (the VSC) is the official and primary provider of visitor information for Sarasota County where tourism is the top industry.
• VSC operates the official Sarasota Visitors Information Center located at 701 North Tamiami Trail, south of the Sarasota Bradenton International Airport. The Visitors Center is staffed by fifty knowledgeable volunteers who welcome approximately 100,000 visitors and newcomers a year to the area. Partners are welcome to display their promotional literature in the center year-round.
• VSC matches $3 million of Tourism Development Tax Funds with $400,000 in private dollars contributed by the tourism industry to create a $3.4 million marketing campaign for Sarasota County.
• VSC has one of the most powerful and effective tourism media relations in the State - hosting or assisting more than 250 travel writers annually from various media outlets, including print and online. Annually, the VSC is responsible for generating hundreds of millions of media impressions. The VSC also has public relations and sales representation in the United Kingdom and Germany.
• VSC produces the only "Official Sarasota County Visitors Guide", distributed to 135,000 potential visitors annually.
• www.visitsarasota.org is the official and comprehensive visitor web site for Sarasota County, serving vacationers, meeting planners, sports event holders and travel agents. In 2011, the website had over 5 million pages views and over 1 million visits.
• VSC does extensive research on visitor trends, tourist spending, and occupancy and average daily rate numbers, which are available to all VSC partners. Here are just some of the recent results:
  
  
  • Average annual income of web visitors $107,000 per year. 
  • VSC's web users stay an average of 6.9 days in Sarasota. 
  • 48% of the VSC web users convert to visitors.
  • Average expenditures per party of our VSC web visitor is $3,014.43.
• VSC hosts exclusive networking opportunities for the tourism industry through Hospitality Connections and monthly Partner Coffee.
• The Sarasota County Sport Commission (SCSC) is a division of VISIT SARASOTA COUNTY. The main focus of the SCSC is sports tourism and generating new visitors to the area through sports. The mission of the SCSC is to position Sarasota County as the must-experience sports destination on Florida's Gulf Coast through quality events and initiatives. We accomplish this mission by supporting over 50 sporting events per year and by promoting our leisure sports product such as golf and tennis.