Florida’s Tourist Resorts Report Great Season

Officials from the U.S. cities of Miami Beach and Orlando said today their hefty tourism gains are sending out a strong signal that Florida is finally stepping out of the 9/11 fallout.

Authorities from Orange County in Orlando (central Florida), home to a couple of top-notch theme parks such as Disney World and Universal Studios, reported a 23 percent tax hike on tourism from 2003.

Duties levied on tourists this year have so far added up $66 million, up 16 percent from that first four months of 2003.

For their part, authorities in Miami Beach informed that taxes collected during the Memorial Day weekend (May 29 and 31), tallied $10 million, one million dollars more than on the 2003 Memorial Day.

The Memorial Day weekend is traditionally observed by some 200,000 local tourists, especially African-Americans who come to Miami for the so-called hip-hop culture day to attend concerts and festivals of rap, reggae, jazz, R&B and Latin music. This is by far one of the best red-letter days for the local travel industry.

This time around, the number was in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million visitors who spent over $100 a day in two- and three-star hotels, and way over $300 in higher-category lodgings.