By Tom Flanigan
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wfsu/local-wfsu-982653.mp3
Tallahassee, FL – While many Florida businesses are still struggling, Tom Flanigan reports the state's tourism industry is actually booming.
From April to June this year, the number of visitors coming to Florida was up almost seven percent from the same time a year ago. Visit Florida's preliminary numbers pegged the quarter's visitor total at just over twenty-one million people.
Domestic visitors, which comprise the bulk of that total, increased by some five percent. But the big gains were in overseas visitors, up more than seventeen percent and Canadian tourists, which surged by more than eighteen percent. And at a time when job creation is at a premium, Florida tourism added almost forty-thousand jobs during the second quarter.
That's up four percent from a year ago.