ANNA MARIA – Research Data Services’ Anne Wittine presented her upbeat state of tourism report to the Manatee County Tourist Development Council (TDC) on April 15.
Wittine’s report featured the latest available statistics related to the tourism industry in Manatee County from February 2024 compared to February 2023.
Total visitors were up by 4.9% and tourism’s economic impact was up 6.1%.
Wittine’s report shows that occupancy is just under 1% from the same time last year, and room rates have increased by 4%. Visitor origins have also showed growth. Florida visitors have shown the most growth since last year, increasing by 13.7%, followed closely by the visitors from the Northeast. The largest decrease in visitor origins is Canada, which decreased by 32.9% from February 2023.
“Room nights were down slightly, and I know that looks weird, but the reason is because we had a shorter length of stay and a larger party size,” Wittine said. “That’s still a 20% increase over 2019.”
Wittine maintains that trends show a large growth in virtually every category when compared to pre-COVID 2019, and the state of tourism continues to be strong.