While the number of Brazilian visitors to Florida dropped by 10 percent last year and Canadian visitors dropped by 5 percent, the state did see a 5 percent increase in visitors from Mexico. With only 453,000 visitors last year from Mexico, the nation still ranks well below Brazil, which we saw 1,475,000 visitors from, and the U.K., which we saw 1,696,000 visitors from. But Mexico has been a growing source of visitors for Florida, coming in as the seventh most popular country for international visitors.
To help increase the number of Mexican visitors to the state, Visit Florida, the state's official visitors bureau, recently hosted a special three-day conference in Mexico, where 21 different local and state tourism agencies combined forces to show off what the state has to offer to numerous Mexican-based media and tour operators. SeaWorld, Universal, Hard Rock and various local visitor bureaus, including Kissimmee, Tampa, and Miami, participated in the conference. Visit Florida has hosted similar conferences in the past, including the very successful annual Florida Huddle.
Visit Orlando recently launched its first marketing campaign specifically targeting Mexico.
This is the first time for such a conference in Mexico. This isn't the first time Visit Florida has courted Mexican travel industry leaders, though; Pitbull (who was an official ambassador for the state) used the Mexico City launch of his "Pitbull Miami" fragrance last year as a time to showcase what the state has to offer. In May of this year, Visit Florida also hosted four influential travel writers from Mexico for a whirlwind tour of Orlando.
With this focus on Mexican visitors still new, it'll be some time before we see if the conference and other events bring in more visitors from Mexico to Florida.
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