In 2020, Florida tourism has fallen to its lowest number of visitors in ten years due to the COVID-19 pandemic with only about 86.714 million tourists.
Visitation had been growing steadily in the past decade from the 80.879 million tourists who visited Florida in 2009 and 82.315 million tourists in 2010. Florida has had at least 100 million visitors per year since 2015. In 2019, there were 131.42 million visitors, putting 2020 at a 34% drop from the previous year.
In their posting of the visitor estimates, Visit Florida did note that “due to the unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact it has had on data used to produce visitor estimates, the numbers provided below are likely to face larger-than-normal revisions as new data become available.”
Visit Florida President and CEO Dana Young said the estimated 20.625 million travelers in the fourth quarter exceeded expectations.
“Many of Florida’s top origin markets were under stricter travel restrictions in Q4 than the previous quarter, but thanks to our advertising in the Southeast, visitation from those states remains strong,” Young said in a statement. “Visit Florida’s marketing has been integral to Florida’s economic recovery and will continue to propel our tourism industry forward in 2021.”
Theme parks and resorts such as Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando Resort are a huge draw for Florida tourists, especially to Central Florida.
Source: Orlando Sentinel
I understand the need of tourism for different businesses, but I don’t feel safe in my own town knowing so many people from all over the US come to visit for vacation. The Super Bowl made traffic so terrible the week coming trying to get to and from work and I hope another surge doesn’t happen here due to all the recent foreigners visit