According to tourism officials, travel to Florida from Canada has nearly returned to pre-pandemic levels, but visa concerns continue to impede the state’s efforts to attract overseas visitors.
Visit Florida stated that the state attracted an anticipated 1.44 million Canadians during the first quarter of 2023. COVID-19 vaccine restrictions have been abolished at the Canada-U.S. border.
The first-quarter figure was an increase from a projected 488,000 Canadian tourists in the first quarter of 2022. 1.446 million Canadians visited the state in the first quarter of 2019, the last full year before the COVID-19 epidemic.
1.371 million Canadians visited Florida in the first quarter of 2020, when the pandemic began to cause severe disruptions in the tourism industry.
“Canadian visitation is where we have seen the biggest rebound by far over the last few months,” Brett Laiken, Visit Florida’s senior vice president of marketing, told members of the agency’s Board of Directors during a meeting in St. Johns County. “Basically, we’re back to where it was prior to the pandemic, with Canadians flocking to the state, which is always good to see.”
Dana Young, President and CEO of Visit Florida, blamed “ridiculous visa wait times that mostly first-time visa applicants are facing” for preventing tourism from many important overseas markets from achieving pre-pandemic levels.
Florida had an anticipated 1.8 million overseas tourists in the first three months of this year, a 36% increase over 2022 but a decrease from the 2.276 million guests who visited the state in the same period last year.
According to Visit Florida, the state experienced a record 37.9 million visitors in the first quarter of 2023. In the first three months of 2022, the figure was 35.528 million. Visitors from other states are still driving tourism growth.