ORLANDO, Fla. — Despite Gov. Ron DeSantis’ encouragement for a full return to normal amid surging COVID-19 cases, most predictions point to a slow return of record tourism.

Florida became just the third state in the U.S. to surpass 1 million COVID-19 cases since March.

Cases are resurging as DeSantis and his administration downplay the implications of the widespread impact of the pandemic on the state.

This week DeSantis, in his first press conference in nearly a month, doubled-down on shying away from instituting pandemic-related restrictions and mandates. Days before, the governor extended an existing executive order that prohibits local municipalities from enforcing penalties or fines for violating local restrictions.

DeSantis called recommendations for continuing social distancing into 2022, even those with vaccinations, “overboard.”

Instead, DeSantis said he believes expanding reopening, including increasing theme park capacities and expiring international travel restrictions would best help Florida’s economy rebound.

“Everyone now acknowledges the theme parks have not led to any major outbreak,” DeSantis said, although it should be pointed out that it is not known if that is true.

COVID-19 cases are listed based upon a person’s city or county of residence, not necessarily where they may have been exposed. A visitor from out-of-state exposed to COVID-19 in Orlando would have their positive case registered in their state of residency, not Florida. In addition, Florida Department of Health says epidemiological investigations are confidential by law, so details about contact tracing or potential links of COVID-19 spreads are not releasable to the public.

“I think one thing we can do to help Central Florida is, and I think the President wants to do this, let’s get travel from Brazil back, let’s get travel from the European countries back,” DeSantis said Monday. 

Of the 131 million tourists who visited Florida in 2019, nearly 15 million were from Canada and overseas, compared to just 3.8 million foreign tourists who visited Florida in early 2020 before the federal government instituted travel restrictions.

Phil Brown, executive director of Orlando International Airport, said Wednesday there is “pent up demand” to travel, but overall passenger traffic remains 40% down compared to this year a year ago. The current 29 million passenger count falls short of early year predictions that were closer to expected close to 52 million passengers.

In terms of international travelers, U.S. Customs and Border Protection are processing an average of 1,000 international passengers per day compared to the 2019 rate of 11,000 passengers per day.

There are currently a small handful of flights between Orlando and Mexico and the Caribbean with Spirit Airlines launching several more flights beginning this week.

In counting departing passengers, Orlando International Airport was the busiest airport in the nation during the last five day period of the Thanksgiving holiday, according to the Transportation Security Administration.

Brown said the advantage for Orlando is that leisure travel is outpacing business travel.

“What we glean from that is that people still want to come to this destination,” Brown said. “We think we’ll continue to see this, but the challenge is and what we saw, the CDC came out with the announcement right before Thanksgiving that had some dampening effect.

"What we’re trying to balance is people need to be safe and CDC was saying, in general, when you look at the nation you shouldn’t be traveling, so I think some people are taking that into account.”

The challenge, Brown said, is ensuring the airport — and Florida as a whole — is encouraging enforcement of CDC guidance such as mask wearing, social distancing, extensive cleaning, and other measures to ensure the public’s safety and boost confidence in travel and recreation.

The latter challenge, Brown said, is that confidence in getting a grip on COVID-19 will have a direct impact on the economy’s rebound.

“We want people to come from other parts of the country, so if they’re out of work and if they’re concerned about going to the airport of origin, they may not travel,” Brown said. “I think the answer is we’re hopeful we can see some of the same kinds of activity, and people are staying safe, but we need to look at the long term and the long term is people need to be safe, wear masks, the airport needs to clean, which is what we’re doing, we need to be socially distanced and we need to get through this.”

Most in Central Florida’s tourism industry are hopeful that following CDC guidelines and wide distribution of an effective vaccine will begin to build confidence for people to travel.

With more than two million people filing for unemployment claims, Central Florida especially continues to face growing furloughs and layoffs by the tens of thousands.

With an economy anchored by tourism, Central Florida has been especially hit hard. Osceola and Orange counties consistently ranked at the top of the list in Florida for unemployment rates.

“There’s no tourism here, and I understand for each and every hotelier it’s become a ghost town,” Jan Gautam said.

Gautam’s company, Interessant Hotels and Resort Management, owns 75 hotels in the U.S., Latin America, and the Caribbean, including 11 resorts in Central Florida.

A year ago Gautam’s hotels were booked solid with expectations that 2020 would increase bookings by at least 15%.

“My volumes, on the books were in the millions and this comes out to not even thousands,” Gautam said.

Now running single-digit occupancy, Gautam said he believes Florida officials need to do more to enforce mandates to ensure businesses and individuals are following CDC guidelines.

“This is not an easy thing to deal with,” Gautam said. “It’s going to take some time, but we also need to mandate ourselves, learn from this and teach our kids and let them know how this pandemic has changed our lifestyle.”

While Phil Brown estimates it will be several years for the airport to see pre-pandemic passenger levels, Gautam says he too believes it will be several years to see his hotel company see the pre-pandemic business levels.

“If we don’t control this COVID and if we don’t maintain it, it’s going to get worse,” Gautam said.