THE FLORIDA TOURIST season surged in the first quarter of 2022, encouraging state and local tourism industry officials and businesses to envision a rosier future, while keeping a careful eye on the caveats that could keep that from happening. Numbers of visitors and other tourism metrics have taken great strides since the bottom fell out of tourism in the wake of the first coronavirus cases confirmed in Florida in March 2020. In some areas they are returning to or surpassing pre-pandemic numbers of 2019. But the challenges remain.
Domestic leisure travel visitors have been the dominant numbers in the recovery. International and business travelers, not so much. With the lifting of travel restrictions, those areas are climbing. Leisure and hospitality employment numbers, which also tanked during the COVID-19 pandemic, have sputtered in their struggle to recover, but continue to make gradual progress. In many cases, the jobs are there, but the people to fill them aren’t.
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