USA: Florida Tourism Grows In Numbers Despite Zika

Tourists continued to pour into Florida throughout the summer and early fall despite fears that visitors would shun the state in the aftermath of a mass shooting and warnings that pregnant women should avoid Miami due to the Zika virus.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott announced Monday that 85 million tourists visited the state during the first nine months of 2016. That's the highest nine-month total ever, on a pace to set a record total for the year.

Scott highlighted the numbers during a visit to the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens, where he touted the work of Visit Florida, the state's tourism marketing arm, during a year where Americans and foreigners saw troubling headlines from Florida.

In June, Omar Mateen went on a rampage inside the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando where he killed 49 people and injured more than 50 others. Florida was also the first site in the continental United States to have local transmission of the Zika virus by mosquito bite.

"Visit Florida does an incredible job of marketing our state and keeping all of our tourism partners, which include both large and small businesses, updated on how to keep our visitors informed when our state faces challenges like the Zika virus, hurricanes and the terrorist attack at Pulse Nightclub," Scott said in a statement.

Since Scott became governor he has pushed for increased state spending on Visit Florida up to nearly $80 million. But Visit Florida has recently come under scrutiny for its decision to keep some of its marketing deals — such as a contract with rapper Pitbull — secret. Incoming House Speaker Richard Corcoran has also questioned whether the state should continue paying as much as it currently does.

Last year about 106 million people visited Florida, with the vast majority of tourists arriving from other states. About 25.6 million visitors came to the state in the third quarter. This year Visit Florida estimates 26.9 million visitors came during the same three month period.

Pulse Is Tragedy Tourism Destination

The Pulse nightclub, the gay venue where 49 people were shot and killed last month, has found its way onto itineraries for tourists from around the world who pay their respects and leave handmade memorials.

Although the club remains closed and cordoned off with a fence, its owner is planning a permanent memorial to honor the victims. Club owner Barbara Poma and her attorney formed a not-for-profit company, OnePulse Foundation, in a state filing earlier this month.

The documents put a plan for a memorial at Pulse in writing,stating that the non-profit's purpose includes "conceiving, funding and aiding in the construction of a permanent memorial on the existing Pulse site."

No details were outlined for the memorial, which is likely to draw even more visitors.

"I think it's a natural human phenomenon to be attracted to places of gore and tragedy," said Brigitte Sion, the author of "Death Tourism: Disaster Sites as Recreational Landscape." "Especially in the age of globalized media."

Sion studies how places like Auschwitz and Hiroshima became tourist attractions.

She thinks the downtown Orlando venue could be so popular it might play a role in someone's choice to come to Central Florida, even if they have no connection to the attack.

"The same way that you have people go to see [the 9/11 site] that have no connection to what happened," said Sion. "Absolutely."

Barbara Poma, Pulse's owner, said she plans to reopen the club she founded in 2004 in memory of her brother, who died of AIDS in 1991 — and is adamant that a memorial to attack victims will be part of the venue.

Similar visits already occur in Central Florida. More than four years after a fatal shooting in Sanford received national attention, the Trayvon Martin Memorial built outside the Goldsboro Welcome Center has drawn visitors, said Francis Oliver, founder of the Goldsboro Historical Museum.

She said the memorial gets between 50 and 75 visitors annually, coming from places such as New York and New Jersey to as far away as California. The memorial has been popular since the trial of George Zimmerman, the acquitted man who shot and killed the teen.

"It's not a lot, but it's been steady," said Oliver.

And crowds once flocked to a wooded area in East Orange County where Caylee Anthony's body was found in December 2008. The site where the 2-year-old's remains were recovered appears relatively unremarkable, with muddy, old stuffed animals tucked into overgrown flora. Unless you knew where to look, the makeshift memorial could easily go unnoticed.

Last week, a recently placed stuffed animal atop the pile gave it away. The multi-colored, striped horse had "Caylee" written across its pristine white nose in black marker, eight years after the child's July disappearance.

Scott Smith, a tourism professor from the University of South Carolina, said it's not uncommon for people to want to visit sites of tragedy, but everyone will come for their own reason.

"Different people have different motivations," said Smith. "Some just go out of curiosity."

One of the displays of unity at the makeshift Pulse memorial is a T-shirt from Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, a grassroots, member-led organization focused on under-resourced communities and communities of color in Minneapolis. Amber Jones, the organization's education organizer, delivered the shirt to Pulse earlier this month.

"It really rocked our community within our office," said Jones, 23. She was already scheduled to be in Orlando for a sorority conference when her coworkers decided they wanted to show their support.

Jones skipped the event's last meeting to visit Pulse. When she arrived at Orange Avenue she saw she wasn't the only Zeta Phi Beta sister who wanted to see the growing memorial.

Initially, Jones was struck by how open Orlando's downtown is, especially the strip where Pulse is located. The second thing she noticed was two police cruisers parked outside the building.

"It was just really a very sobering experience," she said. "Really being able to come to terms with how much trauma has been inflicted with this one incident."

Oliver said she's not surprised the Pulse nightclub has become an attraction for people already in town for other reasons, including vacation.

"They're going to have more people," said Oliver, speculating the title of being the worst mass shooting in modern history will only attract more visitors. "It will draw people for a long time."

Oliver can personally relate to people who want to see the site of a tragic historical moment in person. After all, she drove to Charleston, S.C., last year after nine people were killed in a shooting at a church.

Her motivation was "just being with other people that are mourning."

"It's that healing space," she said.

USA: Orlando Mourns, But Tourism Likely To Grow

The city of Orlando, Florida, has banded together following Saturday night's devastating attack at Pulse nightclub, which left 49 victims dead and dozens more injured.

Yet as residents focused on supporting one another during a state of emergency, experts said the crux of the city's economy — the tourism industry — is unlikely to deliver the state a second blow.

"The travel industry is always having disruptions," said David Scowsill, president and CEO of the World Travel & Tourism Council. "In general terms, it is incredibly resilient."

Scowsill said in general, when city centers experience isolated acts of violence not aimed directly at tourists, "things go back to normal very quickly." He pointed to the 2005 London transit bombings as an example. In contrast, the tourism industries in Egypt and Tunisia have recently struggled, as they've both suffered from attacks aimed specifically at travelers, Scowsill said.

Paris, where more than 100 people were killed in November, has likewise not been immune to fallout from the recent attacks. Data compiled by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies found that overnight stays among foreign travelers declined 6.3 percent there during the first quarter, as compared with the prior year.

Separate data from the Paris Convention and Visitors Bureau found the hotel occupancy rate there fell 6.2 points during the first quarter, to 61.7 percent, compared with the first quarter of 2015 (when the attacks against Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine, took place).

Yet such drops are often short-lived, Scowsill said. Back in 2002, when a nightclub bombing in Bali killed more than 200 people, the tourism industry initially cratered; but it began to recover roughly a year later. Likewise, a spokesman for the Paris tourism bureau said the organization "could feel there was a slow recovery" in the city during the first quarter. Still, he cautioned April is expected to be weak due to the shift of Easter into March and the city's proximity to Brussels, where three coordinated nail bombs went off in April.

Though Scowsill predicts there will be a few weeks of people hesitating before booking a trip to Orlando, he does "not expect a huge amount of cancellations" for already planned trips, he said. That's because law enforcement and the local government quickly and effectively communicated information about the shootings, which were put to a stop when the suspect was killed.

Damian McCabe, CEO of McCabe World Travel, said her firm does not have "any comment beyond that we don't anticipate this sad event effecting tourism to Orlando in the long run."

A spokesman for Delta Airlines said the company has not had a change to its Orlando flight operations since the shooting. At JetBlue Airways, a spokesman did not say whether the airline has seen any cancellations on flights to Orlando, but said it is providing free seats on available flights to and from the area for immediate family and domestic partners of victims who were killed or injured.

A spokesman for Universal Studios, which like CNBC is owned by NBCUniversal, said "the safety of our team members and guests is always our top priority — but we do not discuss the specifics of our security plans and procedures."

Walt Disney World said in a statement, "Unfortunately we've all been living in a world of uncertainty, and during this time we have increased our security measures across our properties, adding such visible safeguards as magnetometers, additional canine units, and law enforcement officers on site, as well as less visible systems that employ state-of-the-art security technologies."

The Orlando nightclub attack comes just one month after the city's official tourism association said it set a record for inbound travelers last year. According to Visit Orlando, the Central Florida city received 66.1 million visitors last year, representing a 5.5 percent over the prior year. That also made it the most visited U.S. city for tourists last year.

These visits contributed to record tourist development tax collections in Orange County — home to the region's tourism district — which last year topped $230 million.

The leisure and hospitality industry is the greatest employer for non-agricultural jobs in Orlando, at 20.9 percent, according to the Orlando Economic Development Commission. There are multiple projects underway in the area for new attractions, including the Volcano Bay water park coming to Universal Orlando next year.

As for the overall state of Florida, tourism spending contributes $89.1 billion to the economy, and accounts for roughly 6 percent of its gross domestic product. The industry employees 1.2 million Floridians