Travel expo offers tight outlook

Miami Beach gets plenty of visitors, but few try to sell their own destinations as hard as the attendees of Pow Wow, a national tourism convention that features 1,000 travel groups selling their appeal to 1,500 international travel buyers. Tourism has been a tough sell for South Florida, where hotel bed tax revenues and visitor numbers have slumped amid the recession. Last year, international travelers made up 48 percent of overnight visitors to Miami-Dade County, at least 20 percent in Broward and up to 10 percent in Palm Beach County, officials said.