Southwest Florida tourism season experienced ebbs and flows during its peak, as the region continued recovering from hurricanes amid economic uncertainty.

Data from Southwest Florida’s 2024-25 tourist season tells conflicting tales. Passenger counts from the two major airports show signs of both economic uncertainty and economic growth. Bed tax numbers were up year over year. But they also went down year over year, depending on the month and whether it was in Lee, Collier or Charlotte counties. There seems to be some rhyme and some reason to the varying trends.

But in the heart of the first tourist season held at Great Wolf Lodge, a 500-room, family-friendly resort in Collier County, the only ebbs and flows that mattered were inside the on-campus water park, where Renard and Christina Ellis had brought their sons Duke, 7, and Dean, 2, for a two-night stay that cost them $900. The memories they made, Renard Ellis said, were priceless.

“We just wanted to go to a water park,” says Renard, a Winter Haven High School algebra and geometry teacher and a wide receivers coach for the football team. “They’re both having fun.”

In this analysis of the season, Gulfshore Business pulled data from spring training attendance for the area’s three Major League Baseball teams, flight passenger numbers from two regional airports and the gold standard metric of tourist tax revenue from Lee, Collier and Charlotte counties. Those metrics told the tale of a region that is going through a bit of an economic roller coaster ride, exhibiting recovery from hurricanes but also showing signs of a slowdown.

FLYING HIGH, FLYING LOW

Consider that tourist tax revenue has been like a yo-yo: Numbers have rolled up, and they have spun down.

In Charlotte County, the monthly tourist tax revenue ranged from $1 million to $1.3 million, numbers that were down by 2.6%, year over year, in each of the three peak months of January, February and March.

In Collier and Lee counties, tourist tax revenue, which is vital toward funding beach renourishment projects and, in Lee, spring training facilities, went up by 4% to 6% in January and February.

March showed a different trend, as the revenue went down by 1.1% in Collier and 0.3% in Lee, to $6.4 million and $8 million, respectively.

“Locally, we did have some changes happening,” says Amir Neto, associate professor of economics in the Lutgert College of Business at Florida Gulf Coast University. “If you look at Fort Myers and Lee County, we don’t have this market fully recovered from Ian yet.”

Lee County is still operating with about 83% of its normal number of hotel rooms, with about 12,706 out of 15,230 operational. That means about 2,500 hotel rooms have yet to be rebuilt after being destroyed Sept. 28, 2022, by Hurricane Ian.

Passenger counts trended downward by 3% to 4% during January through March at Southwest Florida International Airport. But by April, those numbers were climbing again, by 4% year-over-year from 2024. Flights had an even more dramatic drop-off at Page Field in Fort Myers, where private jet traffic ranged between 12,731 and 13,338 takeoffs and landings, which dropped by 14% to 21% from 2024.

“Now when we’re thinking about bed tax, it’s not only by availability, but by the price of each room,” Neto says. “We know supply is down. But if we are not seeing the same number of visitors, that would push the price down a little bit.”

But at Punta Gorda Airport, a much different picture emerged. Even while tourist tax revenue dipped in Charlotte County, airline passenger counts soared year over year  in the first quarter of 2025, rising 22% in January, 17% in February and 27% in March — and 35% in April — compared to the same months in 2024.

Sun Country Airlines continued its seasonal flights to Minneapolis-St. Paul. But Allegiant Airlines boosted its monthly flight numbers, from 537 to 715 in January (+33%), 597 to 763 in February (+27%), 772 to 1,036 (+34%) in March and 543 to 796 in April (+46%), explaining the climbing passenger numbers.

As for the declining tourist tax and passenger count numbers at RSW, Neto pointed to what had been one of the region’s most reliable generators of tourists: Canada.

SHOCK THERAPY

Canadian tourism to Collier County, for example, dropped by about 23% in February from last year, according to the Naples, Marco Island, Everglades Convention & Visitors Bureau. The drop coincides with the new presidential administration’s tariffs on Canadian goods, a weakened Canadian dollar and increased border security.

“A lot of the drop-in tourists are from Canada,” Neto says. “We have seen stories on the national level on how Canadians have pulled back from the American market, so that would directly impact Southwest Florida.

“I don’t think it’s only the Canadians. If you think of some of the uncertainty that has been dominating the national headlines in March and in April, people are holding back from spending.”

The short-term volatility in tourism numbers reflects the sudden changes in long-term international trade policies and their effect, said Alfredo Gonzalez, a Florida resident and tourism development consultant with Tourism Expert Network, which provides advice to different tourism bureaus across the country. In short, President Donald Trump’s tariffs affected tourism in the short term, Gonzalez said.

“What we see today in international tourism, we have never seen before,” Gonzalez says. “We have a situation where the world had been turned upside down with tariffs and new rules and regulations. It’s like shock therapy. And shock therapy never works. What the government is doing now is shock therapy, trying to fix every problem in the world. People want to travel. They need to travel. If you’re Canadian, it’s your God-given right to travel. Little by little, sentiments will continue to change. I think visitors will continue to creep up. I’m praying that this summer, the bed tax collections will reach their normal levels.”

The Canadian issue should be a short-term one, not a long-term one, he said.

“Southwest Florida has a great, loyal base of international visitors,” Gonzalez says. “Germans, Canadians, a combination from central Europe — there are people who, regardless of hurricane or no hurricane, will travel anywhere from south of Naples to north of Tampa.

“Canadians don’t want to be a 51st state. But Canadians are very, very loyal to their travel partners. And Southwest Florida is one of their travel partners. I think we’re going to see an uptick in visitors from Canada, especially with the people who don’t care about the negative news they see. They feel like Southwest Florida offers them a product they want.”

THE PRODUCT THEY WANT

At Great Wolf Lodge, owners with the private equity company Blackstone created a product they hoped would be immune from financial downturns.

During a mid-March, spring break stay, Jessica and Don Davis and their family exemplified that. They hailed not from Massachusetts or Michigan, two states that provide a healthy supply of tourists to the region. The Davis family of five, with children aged 14, 11 and 9, instead came from Clearwater.

The license plates on the cars in the parking lot told part of the story of Great Wolf Lodge’s built-in immunity to the ebbs and flows that swayed the rest of the region; most of them had Florida plates.

“It’s close,” Jessica Davis says, plus they wanted to try something other than Disney or Universal Studios near Orlando. “We wanted to get out of the normal routine. It was quite an experience.”

As General Manager Jason Bays explained, Great Wolf Lodge aims to attract regional guests, not so much national or international travelers.

“Our summer booking trends look fantastic,” Bays says. “Everyone asks me how I would handle the slow season. There is no slow season in the summer.”

Naysayers said Great Wolf Lodge would have trouble finding a workforce, given its relatively remote location near the western entrance to Alligator Alley, farther from the area’s great population base. Instead, Bays said the lodge had 4,000 applicants. What originally was planned to be 600 jobs ended up being about 725 positions, he said.

“Families are always looking for a convenient, carefree escape,” Bays says. “And we offer that. We get about 50% of our guests from Tampa to Collier County.” Many of the rest come from Fort Lauderdale and the Miami-Dade County region.

“Our play is to focus on families four hours away,” Bays says.

SPRING TRAINING STEADY

Patti Scott smiles as someone holds her cell phone camera, taking a photo of her standing alongside a pair of Boston Red Sox World Series trophies. She has made the pilgrimage from Wilmington, Massachusetts, to see her beloved team play the Baltimore Orioles. It’s St. Patrick’s Day, so the Red Sox are wearing green caps, a tradition that began with Cy Young Award-winning pitcher Roger Clemens suggesting it in the 1980s, or so the legend goes.

The Red Sox lose this game 12-3, but it draws a sellout crowd, one of 10 the Red Sox get this spring. Third baseman Rafael Devers drives in a run with a double, and before that, Scott snaps a selfie with a life-sized Lego sculpture of Hall of Famer David Ortiz.

Scott’s experience fits right in with the theme of an area both recovering from a hurricane and experiencing some economic uncertainty.

“We used to stay at the Best Western at Fort Myers Beach,” Scott says of a hotel that’s now gone, destroyed by Hurricane Ian. “It’s been a while. This is my first trip back since COVID. We love coming down for the games, and we love the beach. We really love the Fort Myers Beach area.”

But with hotels few and far between there, Scott stayed at a different Best Western — the one in North Fort Myers.

“As you get older, you just want to sit on the beach all day,” she says. “A lot of it, it’s gone. A lot of it is fixed. I can’t believe it’s been almost three years.”

Across Daniels Parkway, Tara Chwalek of Commerce Township, Michigan, takes in the Detroit Tigers at Minnesota Twins game.

“It’s warm here — but back home, I believe it’s 45 degrees now, and it was below zero in January,” Chwalek says. She’s in town not for the Twins, but for the Tigers.

“We’ve got a Cy Young Award winner,” her husband Chris Chwalek says, referring to pitching sensation Tarik Skubal.

They are far from the only Michiganders on hand. Rocky and Debbie Corradin, from Muskegon, Michigan, visit and stay in The Landings in Fort Myers.

“We’ve got front-row seats by the batter’s box,” Rocky Corradin says. “We rent for three months every year.”

Spring training attendance figures fell by about 3% across all 30 Major League Baseball teams, but the numbers held steady in Southwest Florida.

Floridians still count for the biggest group of spring training ticket buyers, said Red Sox General Manager of Florida Operations Shawn Smith. Visitors from Massachusetts come in a close second place.

“Our entire staff does an incredible job serving our fans,” Smith says. “It is our honor to host so many sellout crowds while celebrating the amazing people of Southwest Florida.”

EBBS AND FLOWS

During a 20-minute, mid-April boat ride from Tarpon Lodge on the northern end of Pine Island, owner Robert Wells shows his boat’s passengers nearby Useppa Island. As he begins to accelerate again, a dolphin begins swimming in the wake, jumping in and out of the water on the boat’s way to Cabbage Key Inn.

The peak of tourism season has passed, but with Easter falling on April 20, Wells banks on getting more seasonal business that way.

The Southwest Florida International Airport numbers show that, as well, as the 1.17 million passengers increased by 4% the count from last year, marking the second-best April since the airport opened in 1983.

“I think late Easters always help,” Wells says. “From a 30,000-foot level, we were considerably slower in the fall as the entire area was recovering from hurricanes. In the winter, we contended with some cold weather days, which make selling cheeseburgers on the water a bit difficult for us, and I was pleasantly surprised at how strong the business was for us in spring.”

Capt. Craig O’Donnell, marina director at The Landings in Fort Myers, said following a down January because of poor weather, the marina sold about 20,000 more gallons of fuel in February 2025 than in 2024, about 25% more in sales.

This March fell in line with last March, which was to say, without divulging any proprietary information, fuel sales were robust, O’Donnell said.

“You can’t really compare the boating industry to anything else,” O’Donnell says. “It’s kind of like when COVID hit, the boating industry boomed, as far as people using their boats. We’ve seen that happen after the hurricanes. People get out on the water and use their boats. Really, the economy doesn’t affect it as much.

“It’s a continuous flow. It does not slow down.”

TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME

Major League Baseball experienced a 3% drop in attendance across all 30 teams, according to an analysis done by Ballpark Digest. But the three area teams stayed static compared to 2024. The Red Sox increased its attendance by 0.02%. The Twins fell by 0.08% and the Rays fell by 0.04%.

SPRING TRAINING ATTENDANCE

Boston Red Sox

Number of sellouts: 10

Number of home Grapefruit League games: 14

Total attendance: 126,102

Average attendance: 9,007 (capacity 9,900)

Minnesota Twins

Number of sellouts: 1

Number of home Grapefruit League games: 17

Total attendance: 113,670

Average attendance: 6,686 (capacity 8,730)

Tampa Bay Rays

Number of sellouts: 0

Number of home Grapefruit League games: 14

Total attendance: 61,811

Average attendance: 4,415 (capacity 6,823)

Note: Gulfshore Business looked at Grapefruit League attendance only for the three teams. The Red Sox had a rainout Feb. 24 and also played host to Northeastern University Feb. 21 (6,794 attendance) and a Futures  minor league game March 14 (5,179 attendance).

SWFL TOURIST TAX REVENUE MOSTLY STATIC

Collier County collects a 5% tax on all hotel, campground and vacation rental stays of six months or less. Those funds get divided in allocation: beach renourishment and facilities (42.56%), tourism promotion and destination marketing (33.56%), amateur sports complex debt (14.29%) and museums (9.59%).

Lee County collects a 5% tax on accommodations of six months or less. Revenue gets allocated to advertising and promotion (53.6%), beach and shoreline improvements and maintenance (26.4%) and stadium debt service (20%).

Charlotte County collects a 5% tax, as well.

TOURIST BED TAX NUMBERS

Charlotte County (percentage change, YOY)

January: $1 million (-2.6%)

February: $1.1 million (-2.6%)

March: $1.3 million (- 2.6%)

Collier County

January: $3.8 million (+4%)

February: $4.6 million (+5%)

March: $6.4 million (-1.1%)

Lee County

January: $5.4 million (+4.8%)

February: $6.1 million (+5.8%)

March: $8 million (-0.3%)