Visit Florida is launching an advertising campaign aimed at encouraging in-state travel to try to help Florida’s tourism industry recover from the coronavirus pandemic.
During a press conference in Daytona Beach on Wednesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis said that between February and April 1.2 million Floridians lost their jobs and nearly half of them worked in leisure and hospitality.
He hopes this new campaign targeting Floridians will help bring those jobs back and help the state’s tourism industry.
“We really believe that this campaign will help reinvigorate those jobs and contribute to these communities,” he said. “This is really going to be, I think, an invaluable tool to help show folks that Florida is back and that we welcome folks.”
Visit Florida, the state’s tourism agency, is expecting to spend around $13 million on the campaign between now and December.
The ads will include digital and social media placement, as well as billboards and TV.
The announcement comes as the state is seeing a slight but steady decline in the number of daily positive coronavirus cases being reported.
Brendan Rivers can be reached at brivers@wjct.org, 904-358-6396 or on Twitter at @BrendanRivers.
