Florida's tourism agency campaigns for 'legal' Mexican visitors

The state of Florida, hoping to boost tourism from Mexico, is ready to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to increase "legal" travel from south of the border.

Visit Florida, the state's tourism marketing arm, is advertising a $368,000 contract for "protecting and growing visitor volume from Mexico to Florida" and "extending the length of stay and increasing spending by Mexican visitors," according to a request for proposals.

The agency outlines the requirements for the PR strategy, including paying for Mexican journalists and content creators to come to Florida and write tourism-related stories.

The initiative comes around the same time that Gov. Ron DeSantis, an outspoken critic of the federal government's response to the increase of migrants at the Mexican border, has suggested a special session for Florida lawmakers to address immigration enforcement.

"We encourage all visitors to come through the proper legal channels to experience all that Florida has to offer," Visit Florida President and CEO Dana Young said. "And if anyone attempts to come to our state illegally, the governor’s words speak for themselves."

This year, DeSantis signed legislation that increases the penalties for driving without a valid license, an issue for undocumented immigrants who cannot apply for a license in Florida, and prohibits counties and municipalities from accepting identification documents that are provided to people who are unlawfully living in the U.S.

DeSantis also sent the Florida State Guard to Texas to help set up razor wire along the Rio Grande in February, a move that went against the U.S. Supreme Court's decision that gave the Biden administration the authority to manage the border.

“It's sad that you don't have a president willing to just, you know, put his foot down and say, ‘I'm not going to let this happen to my country,’ ” DeSantis has said. “But in the absence of that leadership, in the face of the dereliction of duty, we're going to step up and do our part.”

Mission to Mexico

Last year, 514,000 Mexicans traveled to Florida, according to Visit Florida statistics. The top origin countries with travelers who visited Florida were Canada, with 3.8 million; the United Kingdom, with 1.1 million visitors; and Brazil, with 1 million.

The agency selected for the marketing campaign will be tasked with increasing media exposure in Mexico to "support targeted demographic markets" and to "increase the economic impact and gain by Mexican leisure travelers through marketing initiatives by (Visit Florida) and the tourism industry."

The agency awarded the contract will have an annual budget of $128,000 for public relations and $235,000 for trade, according to the request, and the agency must provide a full-time staff person for each, on top of a managing director for the marketing campaign.

Trade is a marketing strategy that targets distributors, wholesalers and retailers to promote business rather than consumers.

In 2023, Florida saw 135 million tourists, but international travel still has not returned to pre-COVID heights. Out of the 135 million tourists in 2023, only 12.1 million of them were from Canada or overseas markets, according to Visit Florida. Before the pandemic, 13.9 million visitors were international tourists.

Young said 2023 had the largest number of "legal visitors" from Mexico ever recorded. This past March, Florida saw a 61% increase in Mexican tourist visitation compared to the same period in 2019. Young said the numbers do not include undocumented immigrants.

Also, the campaign to promote Florida tourism in Mexico isn't new, Young said. The request for proposals "is the continuation of routine business that (Visit Florida) has been conducting for many years."

Visit Florida has long been in the crosshairs of the state’s legislative budget hawks, especially House Republicans, starting with then-House Speaker Richard Corcoran in 2016.

It leaked out that the state’s tourism marketing arm had secretly cut a deal worth up to $1 million for Miami rap superstar Pitbull to promote Florida tourism. Then-VISIT Florida CEO Will Seccombe resigned shortly afterward, and the House for years has tried to either abolish the agency through legislation or defund it in the budget process.

Florida's 2024-25 budget includes $80 million for VISIT Florida. DeSantis has not yet signed the budget for next year, which is expected to be several billion dollars lighter than the year before.

Border politics

DeSantis, who unsuccessfully ran for president for eight months, has consistently backed legislation to deter undocumented immigrants from living in Florida, including what was dubbed one of the harshest immigration laws in the country.

He has blasted Biden and the federal government, not only for their response to asylum seekers at the Mexican border, but also for a Department of Homeland Security rule that allows vetted Haitians, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans and Cubans to enter the country and work for two years.

"We’re doing more in Florida to deal with it than the Congress is," DeSantis said last week in Naples. "It’s just pathetic that that’s going on. So I was really, really disappointed to see that they basically capitulated entirely on the border, and at this point you’re not gonna see anything done on the border for the rest of this year."

"What are we just going to let in another 2 million people and do nothing about it? I think it was a real, real failure," he added.

Last year, when SB 1718 was passed, Mexico's president urged Latino voters not to vote for DeSantis, the day after the governor announced his campaign for the White House. "I hope the Hispanics of Florida wake up and don't give him a single vote," President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said.

USA TODAY contributed. Ana Goñi-Lessan is the State Watchdog Reporter for USA TODAY - Florida and can be reached at AGoniLessan@tallahassee.com. Follow her on Twitter/X: @goni_lessan.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Florida wants 'legal' visitors from Mexico to boost tourism