Tourism News

At long last, Florida's tourism industry knows its fate. While Visit Florida will have enough funding to keep the lights on in the coming year, it faces a litany of new procedures and restrictions that will likely send reverberations to other state capitals across the U.S.

Brand USA has reported positive returns on investment and built the U.S.’ national tourism marketing operations from the ground up over the past six years. But now one of its most important tasks is ensuring the President -- and his Twitter handle -- don’t derail its momentum.

International travel to the U.S. will continue to grow this year, according to U.S. Travel. But given the unpredictability of the U.S. government at this time, the outlook could get worse in a hurry.

Each of these media brands is different, but they have the same thing in common: well-heeled readers who will pay a premium to travel together.

Ross' speech seemed too good to be true after what we've seen from the Trump administration. It has yet to take a single step to make travel to the U.S. easier or more hospitable. Talk is always cheap, but in this administration it's worth less than that, so far.

Disney executives have said they don't mind sacrificing some attendance if they're still making good money. Both of these things happened last year — but the company is still working to drive numbers up in 2017 and the future.

Being named the top anything is usually exciting for any destination and comes with lots of free publicity. But as some tourism boards point out, reviews from travelers themselves often resonate more with consumers than an official ranking.

These are the tourism trends we were talking about this week.

After a long, drawn-out political process, Visit Florida's chances of maintaining its current funding level look decent. The debate helped spawn conversations among stakeholders at many other tourism boards about their own budgets and operations. Hopefully, everyone learned something.

Compared with other U.S. sectors, the travel industry would be disproportionately impacted should U.S.-Cuba relations and travel policies get reversed. It's anyone's guess as to how President Trump will proceed regarding Cuba policies but that picture should become clearer later this month.