According to a report by Visit Florida, Florida’s tourism industry has suffered an estimated 60.5% drop in visitors during this year’s 2nd quarter due to the COVID-19 pandemic. International travel was also off by more than 90%
During the second quarter, an estimated 12.801 million people visited Florida according to numbers posted by the Visit Florida tourism-marketing agency. Almost all of the visitors were traveling from other states.
The state has had a nearly 20 million visitor drop from April through June. The outlook remains dim as the tourism industry will have to combat negative perceptions of Florida’s handling of COVID-19 along with international travel bans.
Visit Florida added a note that the pandemic has impacted the way the numbers were estimated and that the international figures may be higher than the actual totals.
“Please 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 … are likely to face larger-than-normal revisions as new data become available,” Visit Florida said in the note.
“Also note that for Q2 2020, VISIT FLORIDA believes that the number of overseas visitors to the state was actually 20,000-30,000, but the officially published estimate was calculated using the standard methodology per request from the principals of the Revenue Estimating Conference,” the agency note said, referring to a state panel that analyzes economic data and revenues.
A sharp rebound in the tourism industry is not expected any time soon. COVID-19 cases and deaths have been increasing since late June which has slowed the state’s reopening effort.
Walt Disney World recently announced that park hours will be cut back starting in September. This very well could be due to more guest cancelations than anticipated.
We will just have to wait and see how things go with the pandemic and hope things get better soon!
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