Florida depends largely on tourism for economic revenue. Now, Visit Florida has announced Florida has the strongest visitation numbers for the last financial quarter since before the COVID-19 Pandemic.
According to new estimates from Visit Florida, international visitors have dramatically increased travel to Florida. The first two quarters of 2023 saw massive increases in overseas (+21.8%) and Canadian (+81.1%) visitation compared to the same quarters in 2022. Florida welcomed a total of 33.1 million visitors between April and June 2023, with 1.9 million of those being overseas visitors and 846,000 Canadian visitors. Florida also continues to beat records with annual visitation with 70.8 million visitors in Calendar year 2023.
"Visit Florida has been laser-focused on building our key international markets and ensuring the return of international visitors to Florida and that work has paid off,” said Dana Young, Visit Florida President & CEO. “While other states have finally opened their doors to domestic visitors and created more competition, Florida is again leading in international visitors. Florida has the largest share of international visitors ahead of New York and California and we lead the nation in overseas arrival recovery compared to 2019. This is all thanks to Governor DeSantis’ freedom first policies and focus on being the number one destination in the country."
Visit Florida has long credited the work of Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) with the group stating earlier this year that they are, "proud of the work we have done with our partners in sharing Florida’s sunshine with the world and we thank Governor DeSantis for his unwavering support of our organization and the tourism industry."
DeSantis' team has also been credited for other economic metrics, such as keeping unemployment down. Republicans in Florida believe this is directly linked to his anti-lockdown philosophy that ran contrary to most governments around the world during the initial outbreak of the COVID-19 Pandemic.