Florida struggles to catch up with international tourism

TALLAHASSEE, Florida. Florida’s tourism leaders remain concerned about the lag in foreign visitor numbers as the industry anticipates an increase in tourist numbers over the last three months of 2022.

While Visit Florida, the state tourism marketing agency, boasts that Florida is the top U.S. destination for overseas travelers based on market share, the number of foreign visitors to the state and country remains far below pre-pandemic levels.

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Visit Florida President and CEO Dana Young expressed concern last week that global inflation and long visa processing times could impact final numbers for 2022 and tourism in 2023.

“The waiting time for a visa interview in Mexico City is 693 days. In Lima, Peru, that’s 831 days,” Young told members of the Visit Florida executive committee. “It’s absolutely ridiculous and it’s affecting our international visit.”

The US Travel Association said steps taken by the US State Department to reduce visitor visa waiting times have resulted in “significant progress” with the global average below 150 days for the first time since 2021.

In a statement posted online, the US State Department said the delay was due to a combination of “backlog demand” for visas as countries lifted COVID-19-related restrictions combined with regular seasonal demand.

But, Yang noted, waiting times in a number of countries remain above average, even with moves such as opening embassies and consulates on Saturdays for visa applications and increasing the hiring of US Foreign Service staff to help with visa applications.

In India, the waiting period was 577 days on January 19, compared to 999 days in mid-December.

“Waiting times continue to be prohibitively long despite notable improvements in countries like India,” US Travel Association President and CEO Jeff Freeman said in a statement. “While we appreciate the efforts of the State Department, there is still a lot of work to be done to reduce interview wait times to an acceptable level.”

Young said Florida’s international tourism figures would also face a “negative impact” due to the Biden administration extending the COVID-19 vaccination mandate to foreign air passengers arriving in the United States until April 8. The call was supposed to end on January 8th.

Florida is also working to bring back business travel and meetings as competition rises, Yang said.

“We are seeing increased competition from other global destinations that have not been marketing during the pandemic,” Yang said.

When third-quarter tourism data was released in November, the estimated 32.645 million travelers to Florida represent an 8 percent increase from the same period in 2019, before the pandemic largely shut down the critical tourism industry. Of these, domestic travelers increased by 11.4%, while foreign travelers decreased by 30%.

The US Travel Association estimates that international travel to the US was 34 percent below pre-pandemic levels.

Visit Florida, which has ramped up its marketing to offset negative media coverage of issues like hurricanes, red tide and COVID-19, has received $50 million in government funding this year. The company is seeking $100 million in the next fiscal year, according to the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity.

Young said Visit Florida is in “phase two” of its response to Hurricane Yang. A Category 4 hurricane made landfall on September 28 in southwest Florida and caused extensive damage as it crossed the state.

“We launched Stage 1 on October 8th. It was a quick response targeting unaffected areas of the state to show that Florida is still open for business,” Young said. “We have sent video teams across the state to unaffected areas so they can film live footage with date stamps of people enjoying the Florida sun. This was done to combat the $165 million in negative media revenue we received over a roughly three-week period and to dispel the misconception that Florida as a state has been destroyed.”

Tourism data for the fourth quarter and overall data for 2022 are expected to be released in mid-February.

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