Florida, the sunshine state famous for its theme parks, attracted 1.1 million visitors from the United Kingdom last year, a 1% drop on 2023 and 14.8% less than before the pandemic in 2019.
The VisitFlorida tourist board has not commented on the reason for the drop, but it is significant as more people travel to the state from the U.K. than any other country, except Canada. U.K. travelers represented 9.4% of international visitors to Florida last year compared to 9.6% in 2019 when they were attracted by blockbuster new theme park attractions at Walt Disney World and Universal Studios in Orlando.
The former swung open the doors to the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge land whereas the latter became home to Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure which is based on the smash hit Harry Potter movies. The openings cast a powerful spell on U.K. travelers and 1% more of them visited Florida in 2019 than the previous year. Then Covid-19 brought the world to a standstill and Florida still hasn’t fully recovered.
During 2020, Florida became more famous in the U.K. for its response to the pandemic than for its attractions. Its theme parks re-opened from lockdown months ahead of many of their counterparts in other countries, and the number of Covid cases in the state soared. That’s not the only reason that dark clouds gathered over it.
Consumers had a pent-up demand to travel and an increased desire to visit escapist environments where they could forget about the pandemic. Crucially, they were flush with furlough cash so could afford to pay a premium. Theme park operators made the most of this and raised their ticket prices whilst scrapping previously free frills. Disney World put the brakes on free buses from the airport and also scrapped complimentary queue-cutting passes as well as collectible contactless wristbands for its hotel guests.
It led to furious fans repeatedly railing against the parks on social media. One British couple slammed Disney World for charging them $886 for one day at its Magic Kingdom park as well as a night at the mid-tier Port Orleans hotel and meals in average restaurants.
Another British family took to TikTok to say they were charged $1,100 in just one day at Universal Studios in Orlando with $438.66 spent on admission tickets and $396 for queue-cutting passes.
Against this backdrop it’s perhaps no surprise that the number of U.K. visitors to Florida is still sharply down on the pre-pandemic highs. The same goes for tourism from the U.K. to Orlando in particular. VisitOrlando’s latest data shows that although the number of travelers from the U.K. has increased since lockdown ended, in 2023 it was still 14.8% down on 2019.
Surpassing that may be far from a walk in the park. The U.K, is currently in the midst of an economic crisis as the government is trying to plug the black hole caused by the cost of dealing with Covid-19 and the fallout from the war in Ukraine. In March, it announced plans to cut $6.5 billion from its welfare budget by 2030 despite cautions from lawmakers.
That was before President Trump unveiled his suite of tariffs which threw markets and industries into turmoil. Although the U.K. is at the lowest end of the tariff range, with just 10% applied to its imports, the global chaos is expected to dent the country’s disposable income and gross domestic product — the value of all of the goods and services it produces.
According to accountancy firm KPMG, the tariffs could cause U.K. GDP growth to fall from 1.1% to just 0.8% in 2025 and 2026. Banking giant J.P. Morgan has an even bleaker forecast of 0.6% growth for 2025 putting the U.K. perilously close to a recession which is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. Sky News even recently suggested that all of the world’s major economies could be heading in that direction due to the tariffs.
The threat they pose to theme park operators was recently highlighted by Rich Greenfield of media analysts LightShed who said “it’s hard not to be concerned about the look forward for Disney. Their biggest market of international travel to Orlando is Canada. Canada has been cutting lots of flights. I’m certainly concerned about other countries sort of advising citizens not to come to the U.S. as sort of retribution. So you know, like this will take time to play out.”
Disney declined to comment on the expected impact of the tariffs. It is against the clock as next month, Universal will swing open the gates to a new Orlando theme park. Called Epic Universe, it comes at an estimated cost of $7.7 billion and is expected to attract visitors from all over the world, though the introduction of tariffs could impact it too.
“I don’t know how quickly this filters into forward bookings,” says Greenfield. “But it’s certainly something that, you know, I think we’re going to be looking at what the commentary is heading into this summer, especially because you’ve got Epic. And every review we keep hearing for Epic is that Epic is awesome.”
Universal, of course, is its cheerleader in chief.
“It’s the first major park opening this century, so there’s an excitement and a buzz for people who are Florida fans. But then, for me, the excitement is going beyond that to those people for whom Orlando and Florida is not front of mind,” said Alison Montague, vice-president of international sales and marketing EMEA for Universal Destinations & Experiences in an interview with trade title Travel Weekly.
Epic Universe is the fourth Universal park in Orlando and Montague added that tourists “are going to need more days here, for sure, so we would anticipate we would see people staying more frequently on site and spending more of their traditional holiday time based at Universal Orlando Resort.” Time will tell if Universal ends up being a victim of its own success.
Just a few days after Epic Universe hosted one of its biggest media previews, Universal dropped the bombshell news that it is developing a 476 acre theme park in the U.K. Due to open in 2031 it is expected to welcome 8.5 million guests in its first year and generate $65 billion (£50 billion) of direct and indirect economic benefit for the U.K. over the next three decades.
It is undoubtedly enchanting news for the local economy but the timing seems to be terrible for Orlando.
The announcement enables the U.K. government to show that it is driving inward investment despite the atmosphere of austerity. It also gives parents who have been struggling with the cost of living crisis in the U.K. an excuse to pacify children clamoring to go to Epic Universe having seen the coverage of the new park. The kids can now be told that if they wait just a few years they can go as often as they want to Universal because it is building a theme park just down the road.
With the U.K. government’s welfare cuts running to 2030 it remains to be seen what state the country’s economy will be in when the new park premieres. If multiple major countries go into recession then Universal and its competitors could be waiting a long time for a happy ending.
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