Kerry Baker, executive director of the Key West Chamber of Commerce, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what the chamber does.
The Chamber often has speakers at various events, sometimes elected officials.
Baker said, “The one thing that we always try to encourage our members to, and we’re very grateful and appreciative, is that when we have our elected officials and even just speakers in general, they’re always available for questions. So it does give our members an opportunity, one on one, after and before, to be able to ask questions, and they’re always happy to take a little bit of time and answer things and help our residents and business owners with anything that they may have questions on or certainly just to be able to listen. Feedback is important, and they represent us. So I think that that is really important for us to give our members a forum to hear what’s going on within the city, the county, even on a state level. We’re really excited to have Kara and her team come in and do a presentation at our lunch meeting this month, on February the 26th at the Beachside. Because it’s going to give people an opportunity to hear what’s going on with the TDC, learn a little bit more about our tourism community. They also have their big forum that they’re doing on February the 25th from 1 to 5 at Tennessee Williams. I’m really looking forward to that. They have some state speakers coming in, and it’s just really an opportunity for them to let our residents and businesses and people within our tourism industry know what’s going on with our tourism here in the Florida Keys as well, as just trends. It is very interesting to see where our visitors are coming from, how long they’re staying here, how much money that they spend while they’re here. It’s a huge economic driving force for our community. So I think this will be a great opportunity for us to come into their public workshop, and then the very next day, we’re very grateful for Kara to be taking some time to come and speak to our membership.”
We’re off to a pretty good start for 2025 in terms of tourism.
Baker said, “We’re getting some reports from our members. February has looked really strong. So hotel bookings have been good for February. Presidents Day weekend, historically, is one of the busier three day weekends of the year, because it does usually coincide with Valentine’s Day. This year it fell perfect with Valentine’s Day today, Monday is a holiday, not for a lot of people in the tourism world, but Monday is a holiday for a lot of people. There’s a lot of great, exciting things going on around town. The Truman Little White House, this is a huge weekend for them. They do a lot of events, presidential type events at the Truman Little White House this weekend. So definitely check it out. One thing I do want to encourage people, especially if you’re a nonprofit and you’re having an event, make sure you send that to the chamber. We have an online community calendar. People can go in and check to see what’s going on any day of the week, but there are so many activities, and that’s where you can find a lot of that information. So I encourage our nonprofits reach out to the chamber, make sure that we have your event information, and we are happy to promote that as well. We have it on our website. We put it on our week at a glance, so we send out to over 1,000 people each week, and that gives them an opportunity to see what’s going on around town. There’s just really so many great events. So there’s a lot of things coming up you have the Old Island Restoration Foundation that always does their house tours. There’s just really a lot of wonderful cultural activities. Mel Fisher’s always has a lot of great things going on there. Of course, the Hemingway House, I see they have some good events coming up too, that they’re doing a partnership with Samuel’s House and some other organizations. So there really just is a lot going on around town. The chamber stays busy. We have great spoke speakers for the next couple of months, and we’ll be looking to do some seminars coming up throughout the year. I’m looking to bring in someone to do an AI seminar, which I think will be very helpful for our members on learning how to navigate and use AI within their business. So it’s just, there’s always a lot going on in Key West, but this should definitely be a really busy month. March will be busy. We’ll be kicking off with Spring Break, a lot of our international travel. Usually season runs really strong through Easter, and then you see a little bit of decline, and then we start going kind of into more of our historical off season and then we have ups and downs with various events that take place during the summer.”
The chamber also provides scholarships for local seniors.
Baker said, “The one thing that we want to make sure that the community knows is there are other high school options in Key West so it’s not restricted to students at Key West High School. It can be the College of the Florida Keys, the Basilica, even if your child is home schooled. We have scholarships available at any high school student within the Key West area that meets the criteria is eligible to apply for our Charley P. Toppino and Orsolina Memorial HR 100 award, that is our big scholarship. That is $32,500 that we give to one senior each year and we are grateful to the Topino family for their support on that as well as our members. So it’s a joint effort that we raise that money each year and I can tell you, it is extremely rewarding to be able to help a student. Financial need is a huge tie-in on that scholarship, and really just to be able to help someone with an opportunity. The kids are extremely grateful. Many of them still keep in touch with me. They’ll reach out to me and send us updates, which were always very appreciative and really to hear the stories and hear the gratitude for how these scholarships, really just kind of it changes their life. It’s a game changer for them, because, as we all know, any parent that’s put a kid through school, it is very expensive, not just tuition and books, but their living expenses. It’s like running a whole other household in another city. So we are really grateful to do that. We have the Appelrouth Memorial award that we give, and we give the Moe Mosher scholarship as well. So we’re really grateful to be able to be a part of our community and really help our kids with continuing their education with the hopes that they’ll come back to Key West, which we have had many kids come back Key West. We do want to let the community know again, that information is available on our website, your students and your children will start getting emails home from the schools directly with the criteria. But everything is online. We’ll be opening up the scholarships around the 18th of this month, and then it’ll continue through until we do our selection of our recipients this year. So we are grateful for that opportunity.”
There are also scholarships available for teachers.
Baker said it’s “through our teacher enrichment. We honor 22 teachers throughout the local school system. We sponsor classrooms. So we really do put a lot back into the community and then touching up on the seminar, this coming week, on the 27th I believe it is, we have part of our Rising Star Series, which is stress and time management. It’s a great seminar. I’ve actually sat in on that a couple of times. I think everyone knows that sometimes we start off our morning with one plan and things just happen and rearrange your whole day, but just being able to navigate and manage your time and deal with stressful situations, sometimes just being able to calmly talk to someone and defuse someone that is upset, we’re able to gain back control of that conversation and have it go positive and move forward from there. So there are still some seats available on that. We look to our members for guidance and feedback on things that they would like. The chamber is happy to step in and be able to provide business resources, especially for our smaller members and even some of our government entities. They’ll send their staff and sit on it as well. So we’re looking forward to being able to provide our members some good training tools for this year.”
The golf tournament is another way to support the chamber.
Baker said, “We’re actually down to our last few foursomes available for sponsorship. So I do expect probably in the next week or so, it will be sold out. It’s always a great event. So we usually have our 144 players, lots of sponsors. There’s a lot of food and beverage out on the course. A lot of our members will do tea box sponsorships, and they’re able to come out and showcase their products and services to the players and it really just is a great opportunity. That’s where we were able to raise money that we put back into the community through our community programs. We have hole sponsorships available. We are looking for goodie bag items. So we’ve really grown this tournament. This is our 19th year, and we’re really happy and excited to be able to put it on again this year, on Sunday, April the 27th and we thank the Key West Golf Course and Golf Club for allowing us the opportunity to be able to have this again each year.”
For more information, click here: https://www.keywestchamber.org/