It may not feel much like beach weather right now, but everything is relative. In Chicago there's snow everywhere.

Bay County tourist development council staff has just returned from Chicago, where they participated in a tourist recruiting event.

Chicago's trains recently received a makeover. Some of the cars are now displaying photos of Panama City Beach. The idea is for Chicagoans to see the pictures, hop on a plane to the real place, and stick their feet in the sand.  TDB PR Manager, David Demarest said, "While they're riding the elevated trains that they have there, they'll be able to see the water see the white sand so it's just a perfect time to plan a vacation for them."

South Florida hotels closed out 2013 with fewer empty rooms and higher prices, buoyed by increases in international visitors, sports tourism and leisure business.

In Broward County, hotel occupancy reached 77 percent last month, compared with 74.3 percent in December 2012, according to data released by industry tracker Smith Travel Research. The average daily rate for rooms was $124.87, up from $116.60 in December 2012, a sign of strength in the industry.

Palm Beach County hotels were 71 percent occupied in December versus 66.5 percent a year before, while average climbed to $162.29 from $150.81, Smith Travel data showed.

When you hear "Daytona Beach," what words come to mind?  For a set of small focus groups in Columbus, Ohio, last autumn the words were "redneck," "crowded" and "starting to fall apart."

In the next 50 years some 3 million people will move to Southeast Florida, joining the 6 million already here. So what will the region look like in 2060?

Will coastal cities see a big decline in tourism because their beaches disappeared under water from the rising sea level? Will one of the region's economic drivers -- agriculture -- shrink as open land is converted to more suburbs to accommodate population growth?

Not if a forward-thinking consortium of public officials, urban planners and civic and business leaders called Seven/50 has anything to say about it. The consortium started asking the relevant questions three years ago to determine how best to guide the region's growth through 2060  

That's the recommendation of a new study which says that the global rise in tourism means that too many people are carting away too many seashells. Innocuous as shell collecting seems, this practice is actually harming beach ecosystems.