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Palm Beach County tourism numbers up, could lead to more jobs

Posted at 7:55 PM, Nov 20, 2018
and last updated 2018-11-20 20:34:02-05

At EAU Palm Beach Resort you'll find employees hard at work.

"It's the best of both worlds," Nick Gold said. 

Gold is the Director of Public Relations he says he has seen an increase in visitors this year combine that with holiday bookings and you could say business is booming.

"We've seen a nice increase year over year with our guest coming in from particularly the Florida market during the third quarter," he said. "We see a lot of locals coming in for staycations."

According to Discover the Palm Beaches from July to September around 2 million people visited Palm Beach County with an economic impact of around $1.3 billion.

Rich Basen the Senior Vice President of Marketing for Discover the Palm Beaches says they've been partnering with local attractions and hotels to entice more visitors.

"To really tell this story globally of how great this destination is from a tourism capacity," Basen said. 

The month of October is not included in the latest numbers. So Basen says it's difficult to tell how big of an impact red tide might have had on tourism.

"Well I know we took a little bit of a bump with the red tide situation and I think that despite some of those things happening we made sure that we maintained close communications with or current guest and future visitors giving them the most updated information as possible," he said.

Basen says the county is on track to reach 8 million visits in 2018 which he says can create more job opportunities. 

In fact, this year Florida has seen a drop in unemployment and West Palm Beach saw the largest increase in leisure and hospitality jobs. 

"Every 100 visitors translates to about one job for this destination," Basen said. "We're very excited about the tourism growth and that sector with job creation."