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More than 74 million visitors came to the Orlando, Fla., area last year, a benchmark just short of prepandemic levels, the city's tourism officials reported Thursday.
The number of total visitors was 25 percent greater than it was in 2021, when central Florida was still recovering from the blows to tourism caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly the restricted international travel and convention cancellations. And of course in 2020, the area's theme parks closed for several months in an effort to stop the virus' spread.
"This past year proved to be a key recovery timeframe for Orlando's tourism industry, with a lot of pent-up demand from our top U.S. and international markets," said Casandra Matej, president and CEO for Visit Orlando, the area's tourism promotion organization.
The Orlando area had more than 69 million domestic visitors, with most of them visiting for vacations, a segment that has fully recovered, tourism officials said. The convention and international sectors have been slower to recover, and business visitors still lagged behind prepandemic levels.
There were 4.9 million international visitors in 2022, which is about three-quarters of what there were before the pandemic, according to Visit Orlando. The two biggest sources of international visitors were Canada and the United Kingdom.