Hurricane Dorian creates impact in Florida tourism industry

Friday, September 6, 2019

Hurricane Dorian didn’t crash Florida’s coast, but it probably created an impression in the bottom lines of the tourism industry, which was optimistic for a robust Labor Day weekend.

“Labor Day is a big revenue-generating holiday for Florida before our slowest [tourism] season, but obviously the storm did appear to be a very, very serious storm to South Florida and the whole east coast,” said Dana Young, the CEO of Visit Florida, the state’s tourism promotion group. “It’s not a stretch to say almost certainly there were negative impacts to hotel bookings, to restaurants to other areas of the hospitality industry,” Young added.

In 2017, when Gov. Rick Scott declared an emergency on Labor Day, Sept. 4, before Hurricane Irma’s landfall on the state Sept. 10, airplane passengers coming to Florida went down 11.6 percent that month. But overall tourism numbers increased 3 percent that year to 116.7 million, which indicated that the industry and the state can bounce back swiftly after a low phase.

The storm also created an impact on small businesses across the state, including inland ones in Orlando.

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