After a very challenging year in 2020, Florida tourism seems to be on the rise again.

Theme parks in Florida (including Disney World, Universal Orlando, Sea World, and more) have been reopening over the last year and a half. Though attendance numbers dropped dramatically in 2020 due to the global pandemic, it looks like Florida tourism numbers are now on the rise and some figures are even higher than before!

According to the Orlando Sentinel, lots of tourists have been returning to Florida this year. The numbers are looking drastically better than 2020, and some attendance and revenue numbers are even topping those from 2019.

In the third quarter of 2021 (July 1st through September 30th), Visit Florida reported an estimated total of 32.517 million tourists in Florida. That’s a 0.3% increase from the same time frame in 2019. In other words, the tourism numbers in the 3rd quarter of 2021 appear to have exceeded pre-pandemic levels from the same quarter in 2019.

Some of the contributing factors include the reopened theme parks (of course), increased attendance levels at the parks, and the return of the cruise industry, which began sailing again earlier this year.

Of the 32.517 million tourists in this year’s third quarter, 31.205 million were domestic travelers. Overall, this represented a “a 55.3% jump from the third quarter of 2020.” When it comes to the numbers for international tourists in the third quarter, “the third-quarter numbers were up 60.4% from the third quarter of 2020.”

Visit Florida is predicting another tourism boost from international visitors since the U.S. government eased travel restrictions for international visitors earlier this month. Note that visitors from other countries will still need to follow certain health and safety requirements in order to enter the U.S.

According to Visit Florida, international visitors provide a huge boost to the tourism industry because they usually spend more time and money than domestic visitors do. 

Looking at the first 9 months of 2021 as a whole, Florida saw an estimated 91.484 million visitors, compared to 60.213 million tourists in the first 9 months of 2020. The vast majority of the tourists were from other parts of the U.S.

Disney World has recently reported increases in revenue and attendance, and Universal Orlando reported that this quarter was their most profitable quarter ever, despite the international travel restrictions that were previously in place.

So, it seems things are starting to change in Florida. We’ll keep an eye out for more news about tourism in Florida and we’ll let you know what we find. Keep following DFB for more news and updates as you plan your next vacation.

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The post NEWS: Florida Tourism EXCEEDS Pre-Pandemic Levels first appeared on the disney food blog.