SELLING DESTIN BY THE POUND

“People from England don’t know we’re here,” Teri McCall of Compass Realty said — but she believes that’s about to change.

Thursday, McCall said, Compass Realty will be doing a presentation to two British business groups — London’s MoneyCorp and the British American Business Council — called “International Real Estate — Get the Inside Story.”

McCall told The Log she’d like to see both groups open up offices in this area, which would boost Northwest Florida’s profile with real estate buyers and investors overseas.

“The Euro is so strong, people can come over here and buy,” McCall, who has an international specialty license in real estate, told The Log.
Executive Director Darrel Jones of the Okaloosa County Tourist Development Council said the TDC plans to step up its European advertising next year for the same reason. Jones said European tourists make up around 14 percent of Florida visitors and the Emerald Coast doesn’t run far behind that.

Jones said the TDC promotes the area through presentations at trade shows and media tours of Okaloosa County for travel writers: “We’ve been in about every newspaper in Great Britain, the same with Germany. As we’re part of the Northwest Florida Tourism Council, we have attended the largest trade shows in Germany and in England.”

McCall said, however, that there are still many people in Europe who don’t know the Emerald Coast. In Ireland, she prepared a presentation for one group, and the day before she gave it, a “vacation in Florida” article appeared in the paper: “We were not even on the map — my presentation turned into ‘Come, see this undiscovered area.’ ... This is an undiscovered area for most people in the world. No one knows we’re here, we’re about to boom.”

McCall said the boom will come because investors overseas can see that the government is still stable; the infrastructure, including the new Bay County Airport, continues improving; and people “are just blown away with how much land is still not developed.”

McCall said there are other international developments drawing business to the area, for example a Swedish company considering turning pine trees into biofuel.

She said her goals at the conference include introducing the visitors to people such as Pam Tedesco of Florida’s Great Northwest who can talk about the economic potential of the area, showing off the beauty of the coast and bringing influential representatives of the local area to the conference to meet them.

“I think introducing them to the correct people is going to be the key,” McCall said. “There’s so much doom and gloom, but this is happening.”