The view from Florida still looks very sunny and enjoyable but one of the key segments of the economy are showing signs of concern - tourism:

An economic slowdown, a drop in consumer and corporate confidence and reduced airline capacity have combined to create the most challenging business environment the tourism industry has faced since just after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Florida hotels began to feel the impact of the economic crisis in September, when statewide occupancy rates dropped 10.5% and revenue collected on the average hotel room fell 12.6%, according to Smith Travel Research.

Source: floridatrend.com

Anyone looking around during the recent Easter vacation may not have agreed with this, however.  Roads and restaurants were full, as usual.

But there are signs that European and especially UK tourists are finding it more and more difficult to budget for USA holidays, especially with the weaker UK exchange rate - down by one quarter from it’s peak a year or so ago.  Even European holiday experts such as this Portugal Vacations specialist recognize that the recession has taken it’s toll.

There are signs that the worst may be over, though:

• The UK’s exchange rate has weakened against the Euro also, so the USA’s disadvantage is not as great as it could have been.

• Many UK residents are actually better off than a year or so ago - for example, homeowners with a secure job (e.g. teachers and other local government employees) and a variable mortgage have enjoyed a magnificent increase in disposable income as interest rates have fallen dramatically.

• Florida in general and Disney World in particular are still the number one choice for thousands of children - and adults!

So keep your fingers crossed - if the Dow Jones settles down and the trillions of dollars spent by successive Federal governments achieves even the lowest level of expected benefit, the Florida economy should turn out to be just as sunny as the weather is guaranteed to be.

Do you ever look back on your life and wish that you’d done things differently? Or that you’d had some different way to handle the stresses and strains of daily life?

I can’t pick out many things in my life that I would change if I had the chance.  Right now I consider myself very fortunate to live in a great place - Central Florida - and I have a wonderful family.  Even though they drive me nuts from time to time (and I know I drive them nuts too) my wife and kids are the very best part of my life.  And on top of all that, we are all healthy and in reasonable to good financial straits right now.  So I definitely can’t complain!

But reading one press report today makes me wish that I’d been able to take advantage of one ever-growing trend during my 1990s employment: telecommuting.  What a huge difference it would have made to my time management.  From yesterday’s National Capital Transportation Planning Board:

.  .   .  .  .  just released figures showing that there are fewer commuters on the road these days. Getting to and from the office now accounts for only one-fifth of area motorists’ trips. That number is down from roughly a quarter of all trips fifteen years ago.

The new survey finds that commuters are doing more telecommuting and avoiding the roads.

Area residents still spend plenty of time in the car, but now those trips are more likely to be running errands like driving to the gym or picking up kids from school.

How I applaud their lifestyle choices!  And how sensible of them to focus on getting a work-life balance that has more sanity.  And how I recommend anyone who can accomplish it to find a telecommuting job.

During the 1990s, I worked for one of the Big 4 management consulting firms and I was based in Central London.  Although some of the projects I worked on were away from the city, it seemed that the longest and most stressful ones were in the heart of London.  That meant early starts and late finishes.  What an utter waste of time and money and what a crazy amount of frustration the commuting created.

There were three main travel options to get to the office close to Fleet Street from my home in Oxfordshire: car, main line rail and the subway (London Underground, the “Tube”).  No matter which combination I used, my journey in took at least one and a half hours.  It could be longer - two hours or more.  And the same for the return trip in the evening.

Moving closer to the office wasn’t an option, because house prices were too expensive and it would have disrupted the childrens’ education.

So at least three and maybe as much as four or more hours each day were taken up with the “assault course” that was commuting in those days.  I gave it up in 1997, but I’m sure it’s even worse these days.

These days I work from my Florida home overlooking the swimming pool, so commuting is over.  The web cam, broadband Internet access and Skype mean that I can video-conference with business colleagues and friends all over the world when I need to.

And I look back on the man-hours of travel in the 1990s with the very opposite of nostalgia.  Just imagine what telecommuting could have done to my working day.  Just think about how my time management would have been so much different.  Lots of our meetings, project work and interactions could so easily have been dealt with via telecommuting if the technology had been as common and simple and effective as it is these days. And just think about how that would have released so much time for family and leisure pursuits - it would have released the equivalent of two or more extra days per week.

So give me a time machine and one of my priorities would be to go back and invent telecommuting a decade or two earlier.  We can all dream, can’t we?