ST. PETE BEACH - When Frank Grieco recently planned a getaway to celebrate his wife's birthday, he had one goal: He wanted an upscale holiday.

'I thought about flying to Bermuda or Puerto Rico,' said Grieco, who retired from the publishing industry in New York and moved to Sarasota. 'I shopped around all over the Internet.

'We ended up driving 40 miles north to spend a couple days at the Don CeSar on St. Pete Beach, which we'd heard about but where we'd never stayed.'

Grieco represents the emerging face of Pinellas County's mainstay tourism industry. He's affluent, he shops for travel over the Internet, and his perspective for planning trips extends worldwide.

Pinellas County has begun to note an increase in interest from upscale travelers, both those on leisure and business trips. The median household income of U.S. visitors in March was $120,260, 6 percent higher than a year ago, while European visitor household income rose 16 percent to $116,235, data by tourism consultant Walter Klages showed.

The trend has been prompted largely by lnternet sites showing more arts, cultural, sports and environmental recreation available throughout the Tampa Bay area. It has been fueled by cheap air fares and one of the best exchange rates in recent times for international visitors.

High-end hotels and resorts in Pinellas have responded, spurring more than $100 million to upgrade facilities, expand services and add new properties that cater to affluent, would-be world travelers. The Don CeSar Beach Resort and Renaissance Vinoy Resort and Golf Club in St. Petersburg plan new, full-service spas, and the Safety Harbor Resort and Spa has completed a facilitywide upgrade.

Although the Vinoy, Don CeSar and TradeWinds Island Grand Resort on St. Pete Beach enjoy AAA four-diamond ratings, Clearwater Beach anticipates its first four-diamond (or higher) resort hotel in August with the opening of the Sandpearl Resort.

The visitors trend also is contributing to upscale development in business districts in Clearwater Beach and St. Petersburg. A corner of Safety Harbor's downtown has taken on a tony look in the past year.

Behind the scenes, tourism officials are targeting a worldwide market because the same factors that attract visitors to Pinellas work in favor of other Florida destinations and beyond.

'Ask a hotelier here where the competition is, and you will get the answer that it is anywhere with sun and sand,' said D.T. Minich, executive director of the St. Petersburg/Clearwater Area Convention & Visitors Bureau.

'However, competition has changed dramatically. In Europe which accounted for 16.9 percent of Pinellas's 5.5 million visitors in 2006, you see ads for Dubai everywhere. The Seychelles Islands and Maldives in the Indian Ocean are getting more and more Europeans.'

Plus the Caribbean is outspending the United States for tourism marketing, he said.

In cities such as Montreal, billboards beckon visitors with vacation packages to Cuba. Canada provided almost 340,000 Pinellas visitors last year. Minich isn't concerned about Cuba, yet.

'They have a totally different product from what we offer,' he said. 'Cuba offers all-inclusive stays, with guests not leaving the resorts. We did a focus group in Lee County where he previously worked as tourism director talking to Canadians who visited Cuba, and they primarily talked about the inconsistency in the product.'

The good news for Pinellas and other U.S. destinations is that the weak dollar is providing Europeans an almost 2-1 ratio for U.S. dollars.

Gaining upscale visitors should bolster restaurants, shops and cultural attractions, tourism officials agreed.

'These are the people who spend the money,' said Beth Coleman, president and chief executive of the Clearwater Regional Chamber of Commerce. 'When affluent people come here, they don't want basic hotel services. They want the facilities of a resort, the spas, all the amenities they can take advantage of, like the new dinner cruise on Clearwater Beach.'

Coleman agreed that marketing Pinellas has become more competitive. 'With the Internet, you can look for the deals, look for places that are a little different.' she said.

Meeting Upscale Demand

The Don CeSar's $10 million project to add an 11,000 square-foot spa with a rooftop garden overlooking the Gulf of Mexico stems from realizing its current spa is not big enough to meet visitor expectations, general manager John Marks said.

However, Marks is confident continued upgrading of the lavish, landmark resort will play into attracting additional upscale visitors.

The Vinoy, the Don CeSar's highly regarded counterpart in downtown St. Petersburg, can't boast a beachfront setting, but the resort overlooks the city's marina and has a handful of downtown museums nearby. It's also near upscale shops along Beach Drive and multiple entertainment options along the Central Avenue corridor.

The Vinoy also is planning a $10 million to $15 million investment in a 10,000- to 12,000 square-foot spa, general manager Russ Bond said.

'For the Vinoy to stay competitive, we definitely need to embellish our amenities,' Bond said.

Those enhancements are directed toward the business-meeting segment that favors the downtown location and visitors drawn by the hotel's history, architecture and furnishings.

The popularity of spa treatments, including a transition from an older demographic as recent as 10 to 15 years ago to fitness-oriented patrons today, plays directly into the strengths of the Safety Harbor Resort and Spa, another Pinellas landmark.

The Olympia Development Group, which bought the 60-year-old resort on the western bank of Old Tampa Bay in 2004, spent upwards of $10 million to renovate all 175 guest rooms and has just completed a new spa sanctuary.

'There's been a change in what people are looking for,' said Kathy Gaye, the spa's vice president of marketing and public relations. 'It's important to bring back the spa to its period of grandeur but we need to offer upscale amenities.'

Gaye said Safety Harbor's downtown is coming along. She hopes more restaurants will emerge along with the modern retail complex Olympia built across the street.

Beyond Safety Harbor, the Pinellas areas undergoing the most obvious transformation these days to meet the upscale trend are Clearwater Beach and downtown Clearwater.

Clearwater Beach is in the midst of creating Beach Walk from the traffic circle south. Beach Walk is slated to be a corridor of hotel, retail, entertainment and restaurant businesses billed as the 'future of tourism in Clearwater.'

Mandalay Avenue heading north for several blocks also has been transformed in recent years to a distinctly more upscale flavor. The new anchor will be the splashy Sandpearl Resort on the site of the former Clearwater Beach Hotel. The $80 million resort will feature a 253-unit hotel with an additional 50 suites and 117 condominium units.

Beyond Upscale

The trend toward upscale does not mean Pinellas has no room for its mainstay visitors, the families and bargain hunters from the Unites States and abroad.

'We were down at a hotel on St. Pete Beach where the prices we saw were $400 a night,' said Tina Nickerson, owner of the 17-unit Great Heron Inn on Indian Rocks Beach, one of the few remaining mom-and-pop beachfront motels that survived the condominium- and land-conversion craze of recent years.

'You get a lot for that, of course, but there still are people who cannot afford it.'

Nickerson is investing $90,000 into renovations for the Great Heron, from air conditioning to stairway banisters.

The move to more upscale development has affected Nickerson directly through her annual property taxes, which rose from $34,000 a year ago to $57,000 this year. But a loyal group of annual visitors, many of whom renew year after year from Europe, has enabled her to keep prices this summer as low as $120 a day through Sept. 6 for a Gulf-front room.

Grieco found an Internet special at the Don CeSar for $225 a night. Nightly prices there can surpass $500.

'This is working out well,' Grieco said, pausing from taking pictures of the resort's pink towers. 'We did not go through the hassle of going through an airport, and we have discovered a first-class hotel. We don't know much about shopping and restaurants on Gulf Boulevard, but we will check it out.'

Reporter Ted Jackovics can be reached at (813) 259-7817 or tjackovics@tampatrib.com.