Florida Tourism Rolls On Despite Travel Advisories and Political Battles

Nicolas Graf, associate dean at New York University’s School of Professional Studies’ Jonathan M. Tisch Center for Hospitality and Tourism, said a state’s policies might keep those who are politically active from visiting a destination, but “the notion that travelers — business or leisure travelers — will really change their behavior due to politics, I think that’s a minority of people.”

And that’s true across the political spectrum: Lance Toland, a conservative Georgia-based business owner who approves of Mr. DeSantis’s attempts to rein in Disney, said a state’s policies wouldn’t keep him from visiting. Liberal laws in California, for example, don’t keep him from going there, he said. “I can’t worry about what each state’s stance is. It doesn’t affect me.”

In many popular tourist spots, life was going on without interruption when I visited. In Winter Park, just north of Orlando, lines for restaurants like Prato, a casual Italian spot with a large outdoor patio, were lengthy. When I stopped several shoppers exiting upscale boutiques along Park Avenue, they said that while they had heard of the dispute between Disney and Mr. DeSantis, they hadn’t heard about the travel advisories.

Ashley Smith, 32, was visiting a friend in Winter Park for the weekend and was heading out for a boat tour of Winter Park’s lakes. Asked what she thought about the advisories, she said that she didn’t understand how limiting her travels could possibly be connected to the state’s political dramas.

A more welcoming stance

The advisories come after years of work by tourism officials across the state to expand its visitor base. In 2021, for example, the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitors Bureau announced that it had changed its name to Visit Lauderdale and it had a new flashy tagline: “Everyone Under the Sun.”

Visit Lauderdale was just one of several tourism boards in the state that, in the past decade, have recognized that international, Black, Latino and L.G.B.T.Q. travelers have the discretionary income to spend on vacations and real estate and that it would be smart to appeal to them.

But these days, tourism boards, destination marketing organizations and travel businesses around the state are trying to figure out how to keep appealing to a diverse range of travelers.