This seems to be the media story of the month - and is complete b****** (as usual). The facts - tour operator First Choice reported a 20% drop in their bookings for this summer and, because they have invested massively in new planes for their long-haul programme (which are actually very good but haven't succeeded in bring in new business), someone there decided to cover their a*** by putting out the story that the whole of Florida is down 20% this year. Yet the likes of TCD and Virgin are seeing the same bookings as last year (if not a slight increase overall), while there are an increasing number of people travelling independently (which also hurts the middle-range operators like First Choice and Airtours/MyTravel). Florida is still the largest long-haul destination for the UK by a distance. If bookings as a whole were down 20% (which would be around 300,000 people) it would be pretty disastrous for the UK tour operator business, and parts of Florida that DO rely on UK tourism (it would be the equivalent of Airtours, Thomson and First Choice losing their TOTAL Orlando business). So, these numbers are complete nonsense and (yet again) the media is jumping on a bandwagon that has no basis in fact.
As regards the importance of the UK market to Florida, while we make up less than 5% of the total visitors numbers, we stay for far LONGER and spend a lot more money (mainly on shopping
). The average US visitor stays for around 5 days; the average Brit for 12.5 days; that means we are more than twice as important in pure number terms (probably around 10% of the total tourist business). We are also concentrated in fewer areas, i.e. Orlando and the St Pete's-Clearwater areas, hence our economic impact is even greater in those areas. Some attractions like Discovery Cove have up to 40% UK visitors at times, so a drop of 20% this year would have those places jumping up and down in anguish. The fact they aren't also shows these so-called stories are wrong.
Also, we are significantly the largest overseas visitors to Orlando; the figures for 2005 show Orlando had 48million visitors, of which 2.7million were international. Of the international market, the UK accounts for 41% of it (around 1.1m); Canada 24%; Germany 3%; Brazil 3%; Colombia 3%; Japan 2%; Venezuela 2%; rest of world (inc Europe) 22%.
Sadly for Orlando, the South American market has collapsed since the late 90s, partly through 9/11 (and geater security measures which make it much harder for Brazilians to get tourist visas) and partly through major downturns in economies like Brazil's. There are still significant numbers of Brazilians (and Venezuelans and Colombians) in town in July (practically the only month they visit!), but they are about half of what they used to be.
So, it is certainly a very complicated and mixed message (with factors like the hurricanes of 2004 persuading some people to avoid the summer in favour of other times, like Easter, which has become an absolute boom time in Orlando), but for the BBC (and others) to issue these blanket stories without consulting any of the main sources (and mis-quoting the ones they do use, if anyone saw the Daily Telegraph story in early April which started this trend), is just pure BS. It is lazy journalism at best and, at worst, is another example of how our media serves up pure junk (and I say that as a disgruntled ex-member of the UK media!!).
The bottom line? Florida (and Orlando) are still doing very nicely from the UK market, and our visitor numbers this year (from current stats) are likely to be around 1.5million for the state as a whole and 1.18m for Orlando. Does that seem like a 20% drop to anyone..........?
I read the first few posts on this thread and was flexing my digits ready to post, "Where's Simon when you need him?" Thanks for putting this into perspective (and not letting me down! 
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