Foreign Visitors Boost St. Johns Tourism Efforts

Two years ago, the U.S. Department of Commerce set a goal of attracting 90 million international visitors annually to the United States by 2027. That milestone is expected to happen a year earlier, and St. Johns County helped.

While more than 90% of visitors to the county are domestic travelers, Tera Meeks, tourism and cultural development director, said snowbirds from Canada do make their way down to St. Johns County every year.

“The majority of the international visitors come down from Canada during the winter months and this comprises somewhere around 5% of our total annual overnight visitors in an average year,” she said, “which means Canadians comprise about 50% of our international visitors in St. Johns County.”

In the agency’s announcement, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said tourism is an important driver for the U.S. economy.

“(T)ravel and tourism continue to be critical drivers of economic growth and employment across the United States, supporting 9.5 million American jobs and $2.3 trillion of economic output per year,” she said in the media release.

According to figures released by the Commerce Department, foreign travel to the U.S. increased by nearly 250% from 2020 to 2023.

“As a result of international visitation to the United States outpacing travel to the rest of the world, our country’s share of global travel increased from 4.7% in 2020 to 5.2% in 2023,” Raimondo said in the release.

The international visitor goal is part of the National Travel and Tourism Strategy adopted by the department in 2022. The plan focuses on four pillars, promoting the United States as a travel destination; facilitating travel to and within the U.S.; ensuring diverse, inclusive and accessible tourism experiences; and fostering resilient and sustainable travel and tourism.

While the county does not track the economic impact of international visitors separate from overall visitor spending, it does promote the county as a destination to foreign tourists.

“The county does pursue some destination marketing in international markets, primarily in Canada,” Meeks said. “As expected though, the vase majority of the county’s tourism marketing efforts are focused on domestic travelers.”

According to Meeks, tourism generates $24 million annually in bed tax collections – fees paid at hotels, motels, campgrounds and other short-term rental properties – and visitors spend an estimated $2.2 billion in the county.

“If you take 10% of those numbers, we can probably attribute roughly $2.4 million of bed tax collections in St. Johns County to international travelers with the total spend in the market of those international travelers being around $220 million in a typical year.”