(The Center Square) – Florida set a tourism record in 2024, drawing 143 million inclusive of domestic, Canadian and overseas.
It’s a 1.7% rise from 2023’s record 140.2 million.
State officials on Tuesday said the estimates are 130.65 million visitors from the U.S., 8.94 million visitors from overseas and 3.41 million Canadians.
The trend looks to be continuing in the first quarter of this year with 41.2 million visitors, a 9.36% increase from the first quarter of 2023.
“Florida’s tourism industry leads the nation,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a release. “These results are proof that our freedom-first policies work – and that Florida remains the best place to visit, work, and raise a family.”
In the first quarter, state officials say 91.9% of visitors came from the U.S. (37.9 million) an 0.2% from first quarter in 2024. Of those U.S. residents from out of state, 35.8% arrived by plane and 64.2% by car or other methods.
Officials also estimate there were 2.1 million overseas visitors and 1.2 million Canadians arriving in Florida.
VISIT Florida, the state’s tourism promotion agency, uses several data sources to calculate visitation totals, including enplanement data at 19 of the state’s airports 45 days after the end of each quarter.
These sources also include Airline Data Inc. for domestic visitors arriving by airplane and D.K. Shifflet’s Travelab dataset that provides the ratio of domestic air and nonair visitors to Florida. The enplanement data is provided 100 days after the end of each quarter.
For overseas visitors, international arrivals data is collected from the I-94 arrival and departure forms administered to foreign visitors by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. This data is adjusted by other data from Global Agency Pro, which accounts for overseas visitors who go to another destination in the U.S. before later visiting the Sunshine State.
For Canadians, the estimate is derived by an analysis of historic visitor data with indicators of Canadian travel trends, along with data from the Canadian government.
