A whopping 85 million visitors visited Florida over the summer and fall, a record-high for any nine-month period in the state’s history.
According to the latest numbers released Monday, tourism increase 5.5 percent over the year. In the third quarter of 2016 (from July to September, nearly 27 million visitors came to soak up the rays of the Sunshine State, an increase of over 5 percent over the year. Most of the visitors were domestic visitors while nearly 3 million were from overseas.
The third quarter numbers are the largest for any third quarter in Florida history.
Travel-related jobs also saw an uptick in the third quarter, with over 1.241 million Floridians employed in the tourism industry, an increase of over 4 percent.
The new numbers mean Florida is on track for a record-breaking tourism year.
Gov. Rick Scott appeared in Jacksonville to make the announcement, noting Florida is on pace to meet the goal of 115 million tourists by the end of the year. Monday’s announcement puts Florida just 30 million tourists away from that number.
Scott attributed the high numbers to skilled marketing and advertisement from the state’s tourism agency, Visit Florida, which carried on strongly in spite of a summer of catastrophes including the Zika virus and the Pulse Nightclub shooting.
The summer was particularly difficult for Florida. In June, a gunman killed 49 people at an Orlando nightclub and the Zika virus began transmitting locally in South Florida. Reports of widespread Zika infections continued into the fall.
“Visit Florida does an incredible job of marketing our state and keeping all of our tourism partners, which include both large and small businesses, updated on how to keep our visitors informed when our state faces challenges like the Zika virus, hurricanes and the terrorist attack at Pulse Nightclub,” Scott said.
Scott maintained the work is not yet done, though.
“We need to continue investing in our tourism industry so we can keep breaking records and add even more jobs,” he explained.
State tourism officials celebrated the numbers as an indicator Florida is headed in the right direction and has done good work.
“Today’s announcement shows that the Florida tourism industry has done a tremendous job marketing the state both domestically and internationally during very challenging times,” President and CEO of Visit Florida Will Seccombe said. “It also shows that we will have to work even harder as a state and an industry to maintain that growth going forward.”
Pushing tourism has been a top priority for Scott since he first took office in 2010. Tourism makes up one of the largest portions of Florida’s economy and Scott has increased funding for Visit Florida by $80 million.
Around 106 million people visited Florida in 2015.
Reach reporter Allison Nielsen by email at allison@sunshinestatenews.com or follow her on Twitter: @AllisonNielsen.
