Rod Caborn

Rod Caborn has served in marketing communications management and staff positions with some of the most successful leisure industry businesses in the United States. He has also headed his own marketing consultancy.

From 1999-2008, Caborn served as executive vice president of public relations for Ypartnership, one of America’s leaders in providing marketing services to tourism, travel, hospitality, lodging, leisure, and lifestyle clients. During his tenure, the agency’s public relations billings vaulted Ypartnership into one of the top 125 public relations firms in the United States.

During the early 1970s, Caborn was part of the marketing team that opened Walt Disney World, where he directed Disney’s Vista Advertising in-house advertising company and developed Walt Disney World’s national promotion program. From 1975-82, Caborn served as Vice-President, Marketing for Busch Gardens Tampa where he raised the Florida attraction’s annual attendance to 3.2 million, reversing an attendance decline and achieving a string of eight straight years of record revenues for the attraction.

In the early 1980s, after briefly serving as vice president of marketing for Miami-based Scandinavian World Cruises, a luxury cruise and car-ferry operation interconnecting four different ports in the U.S. and Bahamas, Caborn became a partner in Stokes, Epstein, Moore, Caborn & Moore, Tampa.
Marketing assignments included public relations for Florida’s largest retirement community, Sun City Center, and development of the U.S. marketing plan for EXPO `86, Vancouver, B.C., which hosted 22.5 million visitors.

As vice president of public relations for Universal Studios Florida, Caborn established a visibility program focusing national attention on the largest motion picture and television production studio outside of Hollywood and its successful theme park studio tour.

In the early 1990s, heading Caborn Marketing Group, he managed national communications for AmeriFlora `92, America’s largest quintcentennial celebration in Columbus, Ohio, which attracted more than 2.5 million guests. He also conceived the initial concept for Daytona USA, the popular NASCAR-themed attraction at Daytona International Speedway and served for two years as a primary consultant in the feasibility planning for the attraction’s development and operation.

A former U.S. Army officer Rod is University of Florida graduate. He is a member of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), an accredited public relations practitioner (APR) and a member of PRSA’s Travel and Tourism Section.