On her first big trip away from her home and parents in Brazil, 14-year-old Juliana Garcia will explore Disney’s Caribbean Beach resort, shriek through Universal’s Harry Potter ride and gasp at Shamu’s acrobatics at Sea World. But first, there’s shopping.
Juliana and 85 other teens in her tour group crowd the counters at Perfumeland Megastore. Sales staff greet them in Portuguese. She bags an iPod Nano ($179.99) and Britney Spears perfume ($40). That’s just the appetizer. During her two-week stay, Juliana plans to drop $2,000 shopping.
A day trip to Busch Gardens is on the schedule. But when asked about visiting Tampa, she responded in the international language of bewilderment: "Eh?’’
That a well-heeled Brazilian teenager knows all about shopping and entertainment in Orlando and virtually nothing about Tampa is a minor illustration of a major concern: The biggest phenomenon in Florida tourism has largely bypassed the bay area.
Powered by a roaring economy, Brazilians have emerged as Florida’s fastest-growing group of overseas visitors and by far the biggest spenders. Brazil could dethrone the United Kingdom this year as the state’s biggest source of overseas visitors; in 2010, the 1.07-million Brazilians who visited Florida trailed the U.K. total by just 232,000.
But those Brazilians spent $1.4 billion in Florida last year, nearly twice the level of their counterparts from the U.K. (Canadians, not included in the overseas tourist numbers, remain No. 1 in terms of both foreign visitors and spending.)
Brazilians typically buy one-price travel packages that include air fare, hotels, attraction tickets, bus trips and meals. Local tourism officials are working to persuade tour operators who put together the packages to offer vacations split between Orlando and the Tampa Bay area.
Miami has welcomed Brazilians with luxury stores and international style for two decades. Orlando’s tourism agency, VisitOrlando, teamed with Disney, Universal and Sea World two years ago on a $1 million advertising campaign in Brazil with the slogan "Orlando Makes You Smile.’’
Brazil’s economy, the world’s ninth largest, continues to surge on the strength of exports and domestic spending by a growing middle class. Unemployment hit a record low 6.4 percent in May.
With Brazil gearing up to host soccer’s 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics, consumer confidence is brimming. The country’s currency, the real, has gained 39 percent against the U.S. dollar since the end of 2008. That makes what Brazilians buy in Florida a relative bargain. |