Will Seccombe, chief marketing officer for Visit Florida, posted a note today on the “Sunshine Matters” blog for the official tourism corporation for the state of Florida. It discusses news on how the spill has affected state tourism and where to continue to go to find the latest information about Florida’s Gulf Coast destinations.

Today marks 100 days since the April 20 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion. For Florida’s tourism industry, it’s been a difficult time – attempting to combat misperceptions that our beaches are covered in oil and working diligently to provide open, transparent information to visitors so they could make truly informed travel planning decisions. Although the well has been capped, there remains a very real and constantly expanding impact to Florida’s economy – of which our $60 billion tourism industry is the driving force.

While the oil spill situation and its ensuing fallout have been challenging for VISIT FLORIDA, I am extremely proud of the success of our marketing response efforts to date.  Perhaps the best thing to come from this tragedy so far is the addition of Florida Live as a permanent feature on our website. First introduced on May 11, Florida Live was created to be a real-time resource for visitors to see for themselves what’s happening in Florida. In the beginning, it consisted of live webcam images from various locations around the state, Twitter feeds from local tourism organizations and date-stamped photos by fans sharing their favorite Florida experiences. Since then, we have added a host of additional content, including videos of the day, blog posts, vacation deals, worry-free reservation information, daily travel updates and – new this week, daily fishing reports.

Read the rest of Seccombe’s blog posts here. For more on the oil spill and Gulf Coast meetings, read the latest stories on the Connect website.