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Politics

Record-Breaking 85 Million Tourists Visit Florida in 2016

November 21, 2016 - 3:15pm
Rick Scott
Rick Scott

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.

 
 

Comments

Tourism is important for Florida and in my mind we could be doing a better job getting people here. Those in tourism development have overlooked a major resource--AMTRAK with two trains north and two trains south every single day of the year frunning from Miami all the way up to New York City with many points in between with all of these trains stopping in Florida cities during daylite hours. What kid wouldn't enjoy a trip on a train to visit Florida?All trains have bathrooms in each car, sit down meal service and snack car service and for an additional price sleeping car service for those who want a little luxury and privacy and pampered service. Why hasn't Florida capitalized on AMTRAK to bring tourists and groups of tourists to Florida? With a small investment and some marketing we could make visiting Florida by train a very viable and economical way to bring people in for what we have to offer. Winter Haven FL is a prime example. Our train station is just a few minutes outside of the city and 10 minutes from Legoland! That sure beats people driving on congested I-4 and highway 27. It would take some planning and marketing but it could sure help us with bringing tourists for a wonderful experience. I know Florida is pushing a private for profit train to travel its east coast from Miami to Orlando but this is limited in stops and there are no estimates of costs to ride it or exactly when it will be open for tourists. We have AMTRAK here now in place. Ifeel we should be taking advantage of it to create a unique way to get to vacation and tourism spots.

Yes, these are the same liars, eh, I mean politicians that are somehow projecting a budget shortfall in the days/years to come... To avoid fully funding schools, funding infrastructure improvements, Medicaid expansion, giving state employees a cost of living increase, etc., etc. However, we'll gladly give some greedy business folks some handouts for creating a couple jobs for a couple years, then moving elsewhere. Don't you just love greasy politics? classic.

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