Another tourism record in the Sunshine State. Ken Lawson at Visit Florida says the number of people vacationing here was up by almost 6 percent during the first half of the year.
"It's a great day for us," he said. "We're really proud of the numbers. This is the best six months ever for the state, at 65.5 million out of state tourists coming to Florida."
The second quarter was even stronger than the first, and at this rate Florida is on track to host more than 120 million visitors by the end of the year.
The strong showing comes despite all the stories about the green slime in Florida rivers and the red tide off the coast.
Lawson gives a lot of credit to people who worked to educate potential visitors about the nature of these issues.
He notes that, rather than attempting to ignore these crises or sweep them under the rug, tourism partners were frank about what was happening, where it was happening, and what was being done to clean things up expeditiously.