Florida wants more Mexican tourists and is willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to increase “legal” travel from south of the border.
Visit Florida, the state’s tourism marketing arm, aims to “protect and increase the number of visitors to Florida from Mexico” and “extend length of stay and increase spending by Mexican visitors,” according to the request for proposals. The company is advertising a $368,000 contract.
The agency has outlined requirements for a public relations strategy, including paying for Mexican journalists and content creators to come to Florida and write tourism-related articles.
The initiative comes around the same time that Gov. Ron DeSantis, an outspoken critic of the federal government’s response to the increase in migrants at the Mexican border, proposed that Florida lawmakers call a special session to tackle immigration enforcement. It was held in
“We encourage all visitors to visit Florida through appropriate legal channels to experience all that Florida has to offer,” Visit Florida spokeswoman Alison Hopkins said in a statement. “If someone is trying to come to the state illegally, the governor’s words speak for themselves.”
This year, Mr. DeSantis increased penalties for driving without a valid license, an issue for undocumented immigrants who cannot apply for a license in Florida, and announced that counties and municipalities would accept identification provided to undocumented immigrants. signed a bill banning it.America
Mr. DeSantis also sent the Florida National Guard to Texas in February to help install razor wire along the Rio Grande, contradicting a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gave border control authority to the Biden administration. It was movement.
“It’s sad that we don’t have a president who can stand up and say, ‘I’m not going to let this happen to my country,'” DeSantis said. “But even in the face of such lack of leadership and dereliction of duty, we are willing to step up and do our part.”
Mission to Mexico
According to Visit Florida statistics, 514,000 Mexicans visited Florida last year. The top country of origin for tourists visiting Florida is Canada, with 3.8 million visitors. UK, 1.1 million visitors. And Brazil has 1 million people.
The agencies selected for the marketing campaign will increase media exposure in Mexico to “support targeted demographic markets” and “increase leisure tourism in Mexico through marketing efforts by (Visit Florida) and the tourism industry.” tasked with increasing the economic impact and benefits of
The contracted agency’s annual budget is $128,000 for public relations and $235,000 for trade, and requires a full-time staff member for each, in addition to a managing director of marketing campaigns, according to the request. There is.
Trade is a marketing strategy that targets distributors, wholesalers, and retailers to promote business rather than consumers.
Florida welcomed 135 million tourists in 2023, but international travel still has not returned to pre-COVID-19 levels. According to Visit Florida, of the 135 million tourists in 2023, only 12.1 million were from Canada or international markets. Before the pandemic, 13.9 million tourists were from abroad.
Hopkins said 2023 will see the highest number of “legal visitors” from Mexico ever recorded. Mexican tourists visiting Florida increased by 61% in March compared to the same period in 2019. Hopkins said this figure does not include illegal immigrants.
Additionally, Florida’s tourism promotion campaigns in Mexico are not new, Hopkins said. His request for proposals “is a continuation of the day-to-day operations that (Visit Florida) has conducted for many years.”
Visit Florida has been a focus of the state’s legislative budget hawks, especially House Republicans, since then-Speaker Richard Corcoran in 2016.
It has been revealed that Florida’s tourism marketing department secretly signed a contract worth up to $1 million with Miami rap superstar Pitbull to promote tourism in the state. Will Secomb, CEO of VISIT Florida at the time, resigned shortly thereafter, and the House has been trying for years to either abolish the agency through legislation or defund it during the budget process. Ta.
Florida’s 2024-2025 budget includes $80 million for VISIT Florida. Mr. DeSantis has not yet signed next year’s budget, which is expected to be billions of dollars less than last year.
border politics
Although Mr. DeSantis ran unsuccessfully for president for eight months, he has consistently supported legislation that would prevent illegal immigrants from staying in Florida, including what is said to be one of Florida’s toughest immigration laws.
He wants Biden and the federal government to not only respond to asylum seekers at the Mexican border, but also to improve homeland security by allowing vetted Haitians, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans and Cubans to enter the country and work for two years. It also criticized the regulations of the Ministry of Security. .
“We’re doing more work in the state of Florida than Congress,” DeSantis said in Naples last week. “It’s really pathetic that something like this is happening. So it was really, really disappointing to see that they basically completely surrendered at the border. And at this point, nothing is going to be done at the border for the rest of the year.” You’ll never see it happen.”
“What’s the point of letting in another 2 million people and doing nothing? I think this was a really, really failure,” he added.
When SB1718 was passed last year, Mexico’s president urged Latino voters not to vote for DeSantis the day after the governor announced his campaign for the White House. President Andres Manuel López Obrador said, “I hope the Hispanics of Florida wake up and don’t give him a single vote.”
Contributed by USA TODAY. Ana Goñi-Lessan is a state watch reporter for USA TODAY-Florida. Contact her at AGoniLessan@tallahassee.com. Follow her on Twitter/X: @goni_lessan.
