Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Monday that air travel to the Sunshine State is up - even in comparison to 2019, the barometer that the travel industry is using to gauge its comeback from the pandemic.
In an address in Sarasota, DeSantis was pushing the increase in employment in Florida and segued into travel and tourism.
Since 2020, DeSantis said that air travel to Flordia has increased by 223 percent - obviously not a surprise given the fact that air travel dropped to below 10 percent capacity in the spring of 2020 at the height of the pandemic, and was tempered throughout the rest of the year.
But, DeSantis noted, air travel to Florida is currently six percent higher than it was in 2019, a modest gain but a gain nonetheless.
"We're going to continue to make sure that Florida is open, free and full of opportunity," said DeSantis, who has been known throughout the past 20 months for being an advocate for keeping businesses and restaurants open, and for ordering a ban on any business that mandates a vaccine for employees.
DeSantis said it was those exact policies that led to more people visiting Florida during the virus crisis than any other state.
"Florida offers a better experience, maybe more than other places in the United States, since COVID happened," he said.
But Florida's main tourism arm, Visit Florida, thinks more needs to be done to market the destination. While refuting an economist's assertion that full tourism recovery won't take place until 2024, Visit Florida CEO Dana Young and Chairman Danny Gaekwad said they believe it can happen sooner - if the agency is allowed to exist beyond 2023 and continues to receive the funding from the state, which was $75 million for the latest fiscal year.
Florida has a 'sunset' law on government agencies, and Visit Florida's is set to expire on October 1, 2023.
"It is time to get a meaningful reauthorization so we can focus on the important work we need to do," Gaekwad told the Enterprise Florida Board of Directors earlier this month, according to Florida Insider.
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