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Florida Tourism Posts Largest Second Quarter Ever

Florida had a record number of visitors during this past spring.

Gov. Rick Scott announced Tuesday that 24 million tourists visited the state during the second quarter of 2014.

That's a three percent jump over the same time period a year ago, and the largest second quarter ever for the state.

Visit Florida, the state's tourism marketing arm, estimates that the record number includes 2.8 million visitors from overseas and 1 million Canadians.

Visitor spending from January to May of this year came in at $35.7 billion, up more than seven percent from the same period a year ago.

Scott has pushed to increase spending on Visit Florida advertising to try to boost the state's tourism industry. This current fiscal year the state set aside $74 million for the effort.

Last year, nearly 95 million people visited the state. Scott wants to boost that number to 100 million even though legislators did not increase funding for Visit Florida as much as he wanted.

Mark Schreiner is the assistant news director and intern coordinator for WUSF News.
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