Individual economic troubles pose the largest threat to Florida tourism

September 4, 2008

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Despite rising airline ticket prices, scorching temperatures, terrorism worries and the ever-looming threat of hurricanes, out-of-state tourists are still lining up to fly to the Sunshine State – if they can find the money, that is.

Research conducted for a doctoral dissertation by Jose Cazanova, a recent graduate of the doctoral program in , indicates that sinking incomes due to the sagging economy currently represent by far the greatest deterrent for potential airline passengers to Florida.

“Leisure travel is a discretionary item, so people will cut back on that before something else,” Cazanova said.

This is bad news for the tourism industry, which employs more people than any other single industry in the state and relies on the airlines to deliver about 50 percent of its customers, he said.

The problem is compounded by the fact that the airlines are still feeling the effects of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. According to Cazanova’s statistical model, the volume of people traveling to Florida by air lags 14 percent behind the growth it would have experienced were it not for Sept. 11.

But Cazanova said Florida’s tourism industry has no reason to panic.

“I don’t think it will be a long-term problem because Florida offers a unique set of products that other regions can’t duplicate,” he said.

Cazanova not only studied air travel to Florida as a whole, but he also broke his research down into regions of origin and destination. As points of origin, he divided the country into four categories: South, Northeast, Midwest and West. Within Florida, he studied the five areas most visited by tourists: Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, Fort Myers and South Florida, which included Palm Beach, Broward and Dade counties.

The extra step of regionalizing results in significant because most tourism statistics for Florida are based on an evaluation of the entire state. While those statistics are valuable as a big picture, they can be misleading for a person making decisions at the regional or city level, Cazanova said. His research can help local companies and governments make the best decisions for their area.

For example, Orlando has been able to mitigate some of the decline in domestic visitors by attracting more international tourists, who seek the multitude of theme parks and take advantage of the weak dollar, Cazanova said. Therefore, Orlando might consider an increase in international marketing or special package deals for foreign visitors, he said.

Orlando also is unique in that it has almost eliminated seasonality from its tourism totals. Because its attractions don’t depend as much on weather, it is a popular destination year round, Cazanova said.

Fort Myers, the opposite end of the spectrum, receives 40 percent more visitors in the winter months than the rest of the year. Tourism companies there might look to take lessons from Orlando and look for alternative ways to bolster off-season numbers, such as theme parks or a larger entertainment industry, he said.

But the most surprising result of the study was the negligible effect of hurricanes on air travel to the Sunshine State, Cazanova said. Taking into account each actual hurricane that affected Florida between 1995 and 2006, the total penalty to air travel growth amounted to just .6 percent.

Cazanova explains this in two ways. First, the summer months of the hurricane season correspond with the tourism off-season. Also, while Florida suffered the impact of quite a few serious hurricanes within the years studied, most of the storms had little lasting effect on airports and tourist attractions.

So while the tourism industry is struggling and hurricane season is reaching a peak, Cazanova’s research provides some reassurance that it will eventually recover.

“As soon as the economy rebounds, so will Florida’s tourism,” he said.