Looking to add a little Florida sunshine to your next meeting? Stunning shores, world-class spas, championship golf courses and unique meeting venues await you in the Sunshine State. VISIT FLORIDA®, the state’s official source for travel planning, has you covered, providing great tools for meeting planners to use when planning their next event. Meetings.VISITFLORIDA.com is here to assist busy meeting professionals as a one-stop source for comprehensive information, planning tools exclusively for meeting planners and a “My Meeting” tool to easily create and store information for your event. For more information on Florida meetings, visit www.Meetings.VISITFLORIDA.com.

Search for the perfect Florida hot spot for your meeting. Use the “Destination Search” tool to search Florida’s regional and individual destinations to locate the best setting for your event. This option gives you city overviews, facts at a glance, airport information, direct CVB contact information, local suppliers and sample itineraries. Already have a location in mind? You can also find the perfect place using the “Property Search” tool to get fast and clear-cut property information, such as floor plans, capacity charts, amenities, photos and maps.

Once you have narrowed down your property choices, compare them head-to-head with the “Comparison Tool.” By checking the comparison chart, you can easily compare the features of up to five properties, to ensure you choose the best place to host your event. Meetings.VISITFLORIDA.com also gives you access to quality downloadable images of destinations and properties, to help make your decision a little easier.

Sending multiple Requests for Proposals, previously a tedious task, is now as easy as 1, 2, 3. With the RFP feature on Meetings.VISITFLORIDA.com, meeting professionals can upload personalized RFPs and submit to properties statewide. Or, you can easily create an RFP using the “RFP Generator.”

Once you have searched your destination, compared properties, selected pictures and submitted your RFP, it is now time to impress your clients using the “My Meeting” tool. Compile all of the information gathered from the other tools into one of our pre-designed professional or Florida fun-style presentation or attendee information page templates. Pages can be created for internal use, or for the attendees of your event. By creating a presentation page through the “My Meeting” tool, you can easily add logos, names and dates of your meeting, destination and property information, photos and group event options.

Meetings.VISITFLORIDA.com is all about customizing each event to fit your needs. Meeting Professionals can include additional information as you wish, like adding your own agenda page and any other information your attendees may desire. Once the presentation or attendee information page is complete, a private-label meeting web site address will be issued to you for your clients or attendees to conveniently access the information pages.

So why do it alone, when Meetings.VISITFLORIDA.com can help? Take advantage of the meeting planning tools to allow your meeting to shine as bright as the Florida sunshine.

In addition to online help, VISIT FLORIDA hosts Florida Encounter, the premier business-to-business event, designed to bring meeting professionals, media and suppliers together under one roof and showcase all the Sunshine State has to offer meeting and incentive groups. The 2008 Florida Encounter will be Nov. 15 – 19, 2008 at the Sawgrass Marriott Resort & Spa in Ponte Vedra Beach. Space is limited to 10 – 12 media representatives, so start your application on encounter.VISITFLORIDA.com today.