68.9M TOURISTS IN FIRST HALF OF ’19
DeSantis says state set six-month record with a 5.6% bump over same period in ’18
Tourists just keep coming to Florida, and in larger numbers each month and year.
The state set a six-month record by welcoming 68.9 million travelers through June of 2019, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday.
The record crowds were a 5.6 percent increase over the first half of 2018. Broken down, it includes 61.2 million domestic visitors, 5.2 million overseas visitors and 2.4 million Canadian visitors.
“Florida’s economy has grown this year as record amounts of travelers come to Florida to experience everything our beautiful state has to offer,” DeSantis said in a statement. “The revenue generated by out-of-state visitation has kept taxes low while allowing us to invest in priorities like environmental protection, transportation and education.”
Researchers at Florida State University recently released a 12-year study showing that the average weekly wage in America was $710, but workers in the leisure and hospitality industry were paid only $311 a week.
Meanwhile, Visit Florida, the state’s tourism marketing agency, revised its estimate of Florida visitors in 2018 to 127 million, nearly a million more people than previous reports.
In February, Visit Florida reported that the state drew 126.1 million out-of-state visitors in 2018, setting a tourism record for the eighth consecutive year.
That was a 6.2 percent jump over the previous record set in 2017, the state tourism marketing agency said.
Visit Orlando, the local tourism marketing agency, said in May that a record 75 million people visited the region last year, it the most-visited destination in the U.S.