Omicron will make Florida tourism sluggish

Thursday, December 23, 2021

State economists expect that the new variant of coronavirus will make Florida’s resurging pace of tourism quite sluggish — mainly return of foreign visitors.

As the world is entering into a time of indecision, on Monday, members of the state Economic Estimating Conference decided to somewhat lower expectations through the middle of 2022 for Canadian and international travelers, as the panel considered several features of the Florida economy.

“In the near term, I think, yeah, omicron and all that might have some dampening effect,” said Holger Ciupalo, policy coordinator for the governor’s Office of Policy and Budget.

Amy Baker, coordinator of the Legislature’s Office of Economic & Demographic Research, explained that she hopes that the highly contagious variant will impact the decision making ability of the travellers to take the plunge of travel to and from Florida.

“I think omicron kind of changed the environment,” Baker said. “I know of two people who were planning to travel internationally. They canceled their trips because of omicron, not knowing what additional lockdown restrictions (would be) if they got some place. Would their country be open? What’s happening in the United States? What would be their requirements on them going?”

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