Florida Tourism

Some shops and restaurants have cleaned up and reopened, but others along the beaches will take longer to rebuild and open again.

Visit Florida estimates the state attracted 35 million travelers during the third quarter, a 6.9 percent increase from 2021. The estimate was also 8% above the same period of 2019, before the pandemic.

The campaign features locations across the state — including Tampa — that were not largely affected by Hurricane Ian.

Florida’s pristine waters are its calling card for tourists, who are now returning to the state in record numbers. But what happens when crushing numbers of visitors harm the natural environment that draws them?

For a century, the glass bottom boat tours at Wakulla Springs celebrated Florida’s seemingly endless depths of clean, clear water. With the water too murky to see through the glass, the boats are no longer running regularly — a symbol of the pollution plaguing the state’s freshwater and the cascade of consequences to come.

Port Tampa Bay, PortMiami, Port Everglades, Port Canaveral, and Port of Jacksonville collectively recorded 6.1 million cruise passengers in 2021.

As the Visit Florida tourism marketing agency celebrated record first-quarter tourism numbers while meeting last week in Orlando, staff and board members also expressed concern that increasing cost of hotel rooms is slowly affecting occupancy rates.

With the state drawing record numbers of tourists from other parts of the country as the industry rebounds from the COVID-19 pandemic, Visit Florida President and CEO Dana Young received an 8.6% pay boost.

She shares food-related hacks for your summer road trip, plane ride or cruise. You'll learn how to avoid sticker shock at the airport, how to make your own ice pack in a hotel mini-fridge, and the kitchen item Carrie never leaves home without.

Caladesi Island, in Dunedin, climbed to No. 2 in Dr. Beach's national rankings — only one of two Florida beaches to make the top 10.

A record 36 million people visited Florida in the first quarter of 2022.

Visit Florida has drawn praise the past few years for its marketing work amid crises such as toxic algae outbreaks and the COVID-19 pandemic.