Florida Tourism Slowly Making Headway in 2021

The tourism industry of Florida saw improvement during the first three months of 2021, but the number of visitors was still down 14% from a year earlier as the state continued to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Travel-industry officials can envision bluer economic skies ahead as businesses scale back mask requirements and other social-distancing rules imposed to combat the virus that has killed more than 36,000 Floridians.

Florida drew 26.16 million visitors from Jan. 1 to March 31, down from 30.4 million tourists during the first quarter of 2020, according to numbers posted late Friday by the state tourism-marketing agency Visit Florida. The pandemic began hammering the state’s economy in March 2020, amid a period that includes tourist draws such as spring break and baseball spring training.

The number of tourists fell to 9.92 million in the second quarter of 2020, a 69.4 percent drop from the prior year, before increasing to 20.33 million in the third quarter and 19.096 million for the fourth quarter.

The new estimates by Visit Florida included a revision of the overall numbers for 2020 that indicates the pandemic was worse on the leisure and hospitality industry than previously projected.

The agency in March estimated Florida had 86.714 million visitors in 2020. With the revision, Florida’s 2020 total was set at 79.75 million, a 39.3 percent drop from 2019.

The 2020 figures were the lowest in a decade for a state that relies heavily on tourism to fuel its economy. Until the pandemic, Florida posted nine consecutive years of increased tourism numbers, topped by 131.4 million travelers in 2019.

The new numbers come as the state and federal governments battle in court over the idled cruise-ship industry and as major Orlando theme parks and other businesses have changed mask-wearing rules.

Source: WCTV