Florida Sees Tourism Gain Despite Another Decline in Overseas Visitors
Photo Credit: Sunset is shown on Florida's Coquina Beach in this photo from April 2018. The state saw its number of visitors increase, but overseas tourists continued to drop. Flickr / Rick Schwartz
Skift Take
Florida's tourism picture is still setting records, but the persistent drop in overseas visitors is troubling — especially for a warm-weather destination with global appeal.
Florida set another tourism record in 2018, reaching 126 million visitors for the year — an increase of 6.2 percent from the previous year.
But the state saw a less positive trend persist too: The number of international tourists dropped for the fifth year in a row, according to preliminary figures out Wednesday afternoon.
Last year, an estimated 14.33 million visitors came from Canada and overseas locations; That's down by about 49,000 from the 2017 total of 14.38 million.
The drop comes as the growth in visitation to the United States overall slows. New research from Tourism Economics earlier this year showed th
