Many Florida businesses live by the season. The calendar fills, the phone rings and the weeks go by too fast to fix anything. That is exactly why the weeks before the season are the time to check what customers will find when they search.
What the numbers say
VISIT FLORIDA, the state's tourism marketing agency, publishes quarterly visitor estimates. In its May 2026 update it revised the 2025 total to a record 143.33 million visitors, up 0.2 percent. Part of that revision came from undercounted Canadian travel in earlier surveys.
For the first quarter of 2026, its preliminary estimate is 39.88 million visitors, 1.0 percent below the first quarter of 2025. VISIT FLORIDA attributes the decline to domestic non-air travel, which is estimated indirectly, and says there may be significant variance between preliminary and revised estimates. Domestic air visitation, meanwhile, rose 2.5 percent. The same release reports:
- Overseas visits up 8.5 percent, to about 2.29 million.
- UK visits up 17.2 percent.
- Canadian visits of about 1.05 million.
These are preliminary figures, and the agency expects revisions, so use them for the direction, not as exact counts. The message for a local business is simple: millions of people still arrive in Florida, many from outside the country, and they do not know who you are.
Why visitors depend on what they can see online
A neighbor can ask a friend which dentist or which plumber to call. A visitor cannot. A traveler with a broken air conditioner in a rental, or a family that needs a pediatric urgent care on a Sunday, relies on what they can find in a few minutes: a map, a few photos, the hours and what other customers wrote.
That is the job of your Google profile. It is often the first and only page a visitor reads before calling or walking in. If anything on it is wrong, the cost is immediate: a closed door that was supposed to be open, a phone that rings in an empty office.
A pre-season checklist
Start from the questions a person who does not know you asks. Each question maps to a place on your profile or your site.
| What the visitor wonders | What to check before the season |
|---|---|
| "Are they open right now?" | Regular hours, special hours for holidays, and a correct status if you close for a storm |
| "Is this the right kind of business?" | Categories, services and description written in the words customers use |
| "What does the place look like?" | Photos of the entrance, the inside and your team from this year, not from three years ago |
| "Can I trust them?" | Recent reviews and your replies to them, including the difficult ones |
| "Will they understand me?" | The languages you serve, stated clearly on the profile and the site |
| "How do I get there or reach them?" | Address, parking notes, a phone that someone answers |
Do this in order of what costs you most if it is wrong: hours first, then the phone and address, then photos, then the rest.
Language is not a detail
Overseas travelers and Spanish speaking visitors will not all search the way you expect. If you serve people who speak another language, look at your own evidence: the languages of your reviews, of your messages and of the questions people ask at the counter.
Then write for them, not just translate. The words a Spanish speaking customer uses to look for a service are often not a literal translation of the English ones, and a page that sounds like a machine wrote it loses trust fast. A person who knows the audience should write or at least review what customers read.
Keep it current, not just ready
Most of the work is not done in October. It is a habit:
- Before the season, review the profile, the site and your answers to common questions.
- During the season, add recent photos and answer new reviews.
- After the season, remove what is out of date and note what customers asked.
The idea is the same as in every article we write: a business is not optimized once. It is kept true to what the business is today.
Where AI helps, and where it does not
AI can help you draft special hours notices, translate descriptions into natural Spanish for review and summarize what customers asked about last season. It cannot know when you actually close, which services you will not offer this year or how to answer a visitor who is upset. A person has to confirm every detail before it goes live.
What we cannot say
We cannot tell you how many visitors will find your business or promise that updating a profile will fill your calendar. The tourism figures show that visitors keep arriving, and that is the reason to make sure what they find is accurate.
Questions to ask an agency before you hire them
- What exactly will you review on my profile before the season, and in what order?
- Who confirms that my hours and details are correct before they go live?
- Will the content in other languages be written by someone who knows that audience?
- How do you handle special hours and closures during storms?
- What will you check again after the season ends?
The short version
VISIT FLORIDA reports a record 143.33 million visitors in 2025 and a preliminary 39.88 million in the first quarter of 2026, with overseas and UK visits growing. Visitors do not know you, so they decide from what they find online. Before the season, check hours, phone, address, photos, reviews and languages on your Google profile, in that order, and keep reviewing as the season goes.