The golf industry is suffering from a generation gap.

A drop in participation rates and disinterest among young people, particularly millennials, have sent both the retail and sporting ends of the business scrambling for a new strategy.

For the fifth year, overall participation in golf fell in 2014 as measured by the number of U.S. individuals who reported playing on a course at least once, according to Sports & Fitness Industry Association data.

For the third time since 2000, the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce has been named Chamber of the Year by the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives, according to a news release Thursday.

The award was announced during the organization's annual convention Wednesday in Cincinnati.

National Chamber of the Year is the highest national award presented to chambers of commerce, the release said.

"It is a great honor to win this prestigious award," said chamber board chairman Tom Upshaw. "The chamber would not have received this recognition without the leadership and support of our members, committed board, staff and community partners."

Osceola County, often overshadowed by Orlando's global image as a vacation destination, is trying to stake out a patch of supremacy in Central Florida's crowded tourism landscape.

Citing its huge inventory of vacation properties for rent, it's positioning itself as the vacation-rental-home capital.

The county says it has 9,800 rental units, more than 37 percent of the total number of vacation homes and condos in Metro Orlando. "It is a staggering number," said Pete Bolduc, sales manager of the Kissimmee-based Florida Dream Homes, one of 94 vacation-rental companies listed by the county's tourism agency. "It's just huge in this area."

The Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau will host the Gay Day Expo and other city-wide events from Nov. 25-Dec. 1 from the W Fort Lauderdale hotel.

A new report by the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization has grim news for Hawaii's economy: construction hasn't picked up as much as economists predicted, and a stalled tourism industry is slowing the state's economic growth.

The annual economic forecast found that tourism in Hawaii was "essentially flat" in the first half of this year. A report by the Hawaii Tourism Authority issued earlier this week found that total visitor spending grew by 2.5 percent in the first half of 2014 to $7.4 billion, but that there are still fewer tourists coming from the mainland and that overall arrivals have slightly declined.

The U.S. Travel Association today celebrated the U.S. House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee's unanimous approval of the Travel Promotion, Enhancement and Modernization Act of 2014, H.R. 4450, which reauthorizes Brand USA, the public-private partnership dedicated to increasing inbound international travel to the United States.  "America's travel community is grateful to Congressmen Gus Bilirakis and Peter Welch for championing this vital economic measure in the House," said Roger Dow, president and CEO, U.S. Travel. Dow said the organization was also grateful to many other Congressional members for endorsing the measure or shepherding its passage.