'We're Not Doing Any Restrictions': DeSantis Slams COVID-19 Rules, Touts 'Vacation To Freedom'

'We're Not Doing Any Restrictions': DeSantis Slams COVID-19 Rules, Touts 'Vacation To Freedom'

Show Video

back in april of 2020 and forecasted what was going to happen in florida a lot of people were saying to be really negative in terms of the budget revenues in fact we have more revenue than anybody for well i thought we were going to do well i was confident but most people were not forecasting so you have a massive surplus that we have in the state of florida even though we have the lowest per capita tax burden in the entire united states and if you look at what's going on here in this part of the state destin ford walton had a record year in tourism for 21. their uh tourist development tax revenues increased 74 over 2020 which may not be that surprising because there's a lot of people that didn't want to travel as much particularly when coveted first hit and there was a lot of concern initially and so they're up big but interestingly 2021 the revenues are up 41 percent over 2019 pre-covet and so i think that that's showing and i remember being here in in northwest florida my family we're just here for a couple days summer of 2020 and you see the license plates texas louisiana mississippi alabama georgia tennessee i mean it seemed like anyone that was within driving distance even it was like eight hours they get in their car and they wanted to come to northwest florida and so you really saw northwest florida over perform many other parts of the state which uh and they've continued to do that in terms of what they've been able to do over the last year and a half but i mentioned these these revenues generally so prior to covid hitting january of 2020 the general revenue estimated for the state of florida for 2020 2021 fiscal year was 34.4 billion covet hits international travel stops domestic travel really ground to a halt as a tourism state that really was a big deal so in august of 2020 the people that estimate revenue in florida they dropped the estimate of revenue from 34.4 billion to 30.9 billion and they were forecasting really difficult economic circumstance and then what happened the actual collections as reported in august of 21 for that fiscal year was not the 30.9 billion that they

revised downward due to covet it wasn't even the 34.4 billion pre-covered estimate it was 36.2 billion dollars in terms of the revenue that came in and again we don't have an income tax in florida we will never as long as i'm governor we have the lowest per capita tax burden and yet big increase in revenue we've also led the country in business formations and when you think about it we're the third largest state but we're way more than california which is the the biggest state by far and we saw 114 000 more business formations 2021 we actually increased business formations by 61 percent compared to 2019 the first year i was governor and so i think you see a lot of the momentum and so why are we here today well we're here today to be able to announce that florida's visitation once again topped pre-pandemic levels in the fourth quarter of 2021 florida [Applause] florida had 30.9 million visitors from

october through december higher than 2019 pre-covet outright and up nearly 60 percent from the same period in 2020 this is the second consecutive quarter that we had more visitors in florida than the same time period in 2019 pre-covered and so you have americans throughout our country i think have recognized it's a pain to travel internationally now i mean who wants to be stuck in a foreign country because you get some positive covid test which may be coveted that you had a month ago but they're still dead virus or something you're not even sick or infectious and you could be stranded in a foreign country i mean people don't want to deal with that hassle but then if you're looking to travel domestically who wants to travel to some place where you want to go get a hamburger and you have to show your medical papers or they force you to wear mass or they force you to do all these things and so in florida we don't do that it's a free state you can make your own decisions about what you want or not do but we're not doing passports we're not doing mandates and we're not doing any restrictions and so people know when they come here they can actually have a vacation why would you want to go someplace to vacation and then have someone hound you about your medical papers or about your mask or all these other things so you make those decisions for yourself in the state of florida and it's not just other fellow americans we had in the last quarter three times as many canadians come as was in the fourth quarter of 2020 because you see what's happening there's huge restrictions huge mandates and so people the snow birds have sought refuge in florida some of them of course own property here but many are also just visiting as tourists and so you see that all about fact 2020 december january 2021 we had a lot of canadian snowbirds that have property here they got vaccine in florida because they couldn't get it in canada so we're continuing to see that i think you're going to probably see that more and more dana young has pointed this out but when is it the last quarter or the last year with new york just found out in the last quarter okay so in the last quarter we actually surpassed new york for international travels coming so they're coming to florida more than new york and new york had been number one for like 20 years and probably most even before that and so we were able to do that and again i think it's because the experience people know they're going to be able to come here they're going to be treated with respect and their their decision personal decisions are going to be respected i'm also proud to announce that in 2021 we had the most domestic visitation in the history of our state 118 million visitors from across the nation came to the state of florida [Applause] and amongst those visitors i just have to point out you have governors that have locked down their states impose mandates impose restrictions you have big city mayors that have imposed lockdown policies you have people on tv news networks that advocate for restrictions and lockdowns and almost all of them have been criticizing florida for a year and a half and yet many of them are part of our visitation figures coming down to florida you find him on the beach you find him somewhere else at some resort uh all the while they're treating their own people uh very poorly and criticizing us for treating people uh with respect and res and protecting their freedoms so yes there are a lot of those lockdown politicians that are reflected in the 118 million visitors from across the nation but look you know people vote with their feet so they can say one thing but what they do is often more important than what they say our state now because of all these these numbers we have the highest hotel revenues ever in the history of florida 17.3 billion dollars in 2021 in hotel revenues total passengers at florida's 19 airports grew by 80 percent compared to 2020. i think it would grow more if biden would get rid of the mass mandate on these airplanes i mean how ridiculous is it they force you to wear a mess but if you put the mask under your chin and you sip on water for two hours then somehow it's fine and that's okay it's irrational what they're doing with the mass mandate but i know there are definitely people who just don't want to go through the hassle of having to be accosted about mass so they should re they should absolutely reverse the mass mandate federal mass mandate on air travel people have sued on it nobody's been successful i think it's an irrational policy at this point and hopefully they'll be able to and how they treat these young children by forcing these two-year-olds you know as a vis-a-vis 2020 the demand for vacation rentals which many people uh in northwest florida understand is at an all-time high you know my wife and i have actually thought about hey let's go to 30a we can't find a place that's open on 30a i mean so it's really difficult to do and vacation rental occupancy compared to 2019 pre-kobit is up almost 30 percent in 2021 and i'll tell you this part of the state is driving that and i mentioned foreign travel but according to the national travel and tourism office 30.3 percent of overseas visitors to the u.s went to florida in

2020 which is an increase of almost seven percentage points compared to 2019 and of course uh the first time our market share of overseas travelers overtook new york which i think they've been number one since uh since 2001 uh was this year so i want to thank everybody that's been involved i want to thank a lot of these local local officials for making their community a place where people want to come and want to be and uh this used to be a little bit more of a secret uh here in this part of the state not really anymore i mean people are beating down uh the doors to be able to get here many to buy homes here but others just to be able to vacation here us but we do appreciate everything that you all have done and we're going to continue carrying the torch i also want to thank dana young from visit florida for working really hard to promote you know you know we live in an era where you have you know new york based corporate media outlets that basically propagate false narratives partisan narratives every day that's pretty much all they do and so their whole narratives have been how bad florida is i mean they've tried to do that for years um and uh you know we made sure visit florida we're getting the word out but i think people instinctively realize you know that these are not trustworthy outlets and they basically ignored them and instead were um uh were beating down the the beating down the doors to get down here so so we're happy about that and we want to thank dana for what she's been able to do so okay well we're here we're going to hear from some folks who've been involved in this so we have collier merrill who's going to talk a little bit more about what they're doing here we have chairman ponder from the county commission we have jennifer adams from the local tourism and then dana young from the state of florida tourism so collier you want to come up [Applause] so thank you governor on behalf of uh my brother will merrill is the president of gulfarium and patrick madden and uh patrick berry and his team here at the gulf fairing thanks for everything you all have done for the last two years but a real life example what the governor is talking about so just about two years ago in a week i took my son who's a fourth grader in his class in tallahassee we met with the governor taking pictures and he just done the first press conference on covet no big deal maybe it's coming around and then the world kind of changed and so may 14th march 14th 20th we had to close now one thing we own some restaurants and stuff in pensacola you can shutter those up here we've got 10 dolphins we've got sea lions and porpoises we've got hundreds of animals in here you can't shut her up so what do we do every day is the same staff coming in here the same veterinarians the same staff taking care of the animals 20 000 a day every day whether there's a solo in here or not what did the governor do he let us open back up on may 15th california closed was still closed for almost another year if we had stayed close the way california was we wouldn't be here right now we operate on a shoestring in this environment we love the tourists and really love the tourists then but we wouldn't be here just the money we made from may and our our fiscal year ends into september was over three million dollars that we which pure profit if you look at that because we're already here maybe a ticket taker variable cost we couldn't have done it so then you start 20 of october 1st 2020 and we just finished our fiscal year the best year we've had in 65 years best year in 65 years why california was still closed until april of 21. so half of our fiscal year that we had the best we've ever had over 340 000 people came through here it was up 40 percent was because we were open like if we'd been in california there's no doubt we would not be here today and so we've got a we had our best year ever this past and we look for going forward in the future we just kicked off uh i had to force my brother to docusign the loan document uh for 24 million dollars we're doing a big expansion to the north here we've got uh the the uh turtles we're re rehabbing that we fish and wildlife we rescue all the time a lot's going on here and this will still remain open as we do this big expansion but again on behalf of the gulfarium and the whole panhandle governor thank you for what you did and keeping businesses open [Applause] i think we all uh test here that um if you can't find a unit on 30a we'll find you one in ocalosa county so uh we're always honored to have you close by um you know those uh had the great honor serving our area and local government for a number of years and i've seen firsthand the powerful impacts that tourism has not only us as an economy but also as each of us as individuals i want to thank you governor for your amazing leadership in this area although you've worked relentlessly to diversify our economy you've stayed steadfast in promoting and standing by tourism as a leading economic driver for our state we all know tourism community here at home is quite broad and is made up of an amazing family of those who serve on the front porch to welcome our guests as they arrive to offer them encounters while they're here and experiences that they talk about when they go home you've heard many places say come to our beautiful place and have a family experience but i've often said come to our shores and experience family there's something different here is a culture of honor and service that our hospitality industry is known for so to me it's not just about getting them to leave with sand in their shoes to me it's about getting them to leave with sand in their souls because when they go back home i want it to be this place that they talk about from their experience and their encounter that i don't know what they're doing in florida and especially northwest florida and oclusa county but i've got to get back for hospitality is not something we do as we treat our guests that come from other areas and other states but it's really how we treat each other so governor sanchez and dana you stated clearly many times on the importance of tourism and of course this industry is led by many amazing individuals teams and companies those raised here those who visited and decided to make their home here what many started hit as a vacation stop later came back and opened a business even transitioning military that would be based here they'd leave and say i'm coming back to this area to raise my family it's a great honor to work alongside these partners and their dedication to our local communities and welcoming visitors is part of what makes our destination so special while these past two years as collier talked about have presented a unique set of challenges i want to thank you governor because i remember where we were that ken womp or many others on the phone jennifer relentlessly saying please it's a big deal to us our vacation rentals were served with excellence to be clean and it was governor desantis that released the call and said we're opening you back up and the business began and life can begin to flow back into our economy so thank you for being a great friend of northwest florida but also great importance is a great opportunity we have every day to offer our guests an experience helping kids and families be the best they can be getting them out on the water to offer them an encounter perhaps even a new skill any of which becomes the catalyst to launch dreams and purposes and destinies in their lives as they go back home so governor sanchez we thank you we honor you and we welcome you here today with your visit thank you for supporting terrorism thank you for supporting one of the many lifelines here in destin fort walton beach and throughout the state of florida thank you so much [Applause] and i remember back in march of 2020 all of a sudden like disney and these parks close and i'm like man and then it's like okay well what's going to happen it says like we need to get you guys back open and we we worked on many parks i think disney was the last but we were we had a lot of them in orlando they got back in may they didn't want to do april but they were willing to do may and then disney later but yeah a lot of these other states they had parks closed for a full year i don't know how you can really make that work uh when you have it so yeah we're glad that we were able to to get everyone up and running because you need to do it you got to continue to go uh with um with these jobs and give people an opportunity to live life okay jennifer adams tourist development director okaloosa county we'll also put you on a charter too if you come here so how about that so um as governor desantis said we did have a record year with tourist development tax revenues 74 over 2020 but really that 41 over 2019. it's really important to know that how significant those revenues are because they do more than just marketing this wonderful place we restore our beaches we clean the beaches we clean the parks we pay for public safety and it's very important that those numbers are are strong and good and continue to grow and we thank you for that one thing that you did for us governor sanchez is you made our partnerships better as commissioner ponder said we were on the phone every day almost and as a team a lot of these partners we we were ready when you say we're open in addition to the tourist development tax revenues uh we decided to focus on visitor spend our goal was a 10 spend we exceeded 30 and that brought in 736 million dollars above and beyond the tourist development tax revenue and which was 184 million more than we had projected and that went directly back into our restaurants our fleet our shops our guides and we are very very blessed for that as a result of this growth we've been able to introduce new products and innovations in collaborations with our partners such as the gulfarium one way we've accomplished this is by introducing families to our little adventures which are new bite-sized challenges that make it easy to help moms get their kids outside and make childhood an adventure again little adventures has stimulated local businesses by helping them create new products and experience for both our local and visiting families looking ahead the future of tourism is very bright here in destin fort walton beach our projections for 2020 are pacing well ahead of those record-setting numbers governor desantis we thank you for that we we are truly humbled that you have been a champion of tourism our livelihood and um we're very humbled and also with the continued support and collaboration and partnership that we have with visit florida thank you so much i mean jennifer brings up a good point about like when people come the restaurants you most of these other states these restaurants a lot of them went out of business it was very difficult a lot of them aren't even allowed i mean they can't even serve who they want like if you you have to have a shot record to even be able to sit down in some of these places and so it's it's it's totally bizarre uh and so here in florida they've been able to do very well and i think a lot of restaurants have actually never done better uh than they've done over the last year or so and so we're proud of that because i mean one there's a lot of important people that work in those industries these are good jobs these are good folks i don't think that they i and i know there's no government but i don't think any of these resorts or restaurants should be making these servers wear mass masks you know i go to these these things they don't want to wear them and i speaking this you know i'll speak to a group there'll be 500 people at a dinner and i'll speak and nobody is wearing a mask and i don't think they should but then they make the wait staff wear masks during that time period i'm thinking to myself okay why what does that do if they want to do it for themselves then fine i mean i think people should have that freedom but in many cases they're being forced to do it uh by the properties and so you know i i'd hate to say like maybe we need like uh like a worker's bill of rights on some of this stuff just to let people breathe freely when they're working because i think it's theater i don't think it's really serving a purpose not when you have 500 other people cavorting and then you're going to impose this on 12 people who are working hard to serve so i really hope we can just get beyond that i think many restaurants have gotten beyond it i think some hotels have but i'll tell you you know i've been to some places and they're very appreciative of being in florida that um that they're able to work but i'll always say to them well when are when are they gonna liberate you from the mask and they're all like we don't know but they're all waiting for it so any of these big companies that are running these these hotels or resorts liberate your employees from force masking requirements but we are proud that we've been able to keep this industry not only keep them afloat i mean they're thriving like they've never before people are bringing restaurants to florida because they couldn't operate effectively in other parts of the country some really incredible restaurants and then the restaurants that we've had here before covet most of these are family businesses most of these are they run on tight margins it's not a good it's not an easy industry to succeed in and having fouchy type policies you know fauci he would criticize florida for having restaurants open all of 20 summer of 2020 saying you shouldn't do it he was acting like this is the worst thing ever but i'll tell you what he was really advocating for was the destruction of the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people in our state and we stood by to protect those livelihoods because somebody that is on the wait staff or somebody that's a chef or somebody that's tending bar you know you don't you see them there but then you don't know when they go home they have kids they have mouths to feed they have families to support and to just say that they shouldn't be able to work that was unacceptable in florida and so we made sure we stood by those folks and now you have these these folks doing very well really across the board in our state and so we're proud of it i mean our hospitality industry is is a is a bedrock part of our state not just the restaurants the hotels everything that goes into it but the employees are really hard-working people and so we want to stand by them protecting their jobs but obviously advocating for them to be able to go to work without having to cover their face all day okay dana young visit florida thank you governor and i do indeed have sand in my shoes right now uh and that is a wonderful thing here on this beautiful beautiful beach uh and governor i just thank you so much to be for being here today it is a proud moment for me to be here with you to celebrate the tremendous overwhelming success of florida's number one industry which is tourism the fact that we had record domestic tourism in 2021 is mind-blowing the fact that i'm i love talking about this that we've beat out new york as the number one destination for international travelers is amazing and the fact that in the fourth quarter of 2021 when you include international visitors which they were quite a bit fewer we still beat 2019 numbers so we are killing it here in florida our tourism industry is thriving and this did not happen by accident there were two things that that created this the first and frankly the most important was the leadership of our governor had governor desantis had governor desantis not had the strength of will and conviction to keep our state open through massive criticism and continued news media attention in the negative way we would not be here today and number two is the ability that the governor gave visit florida to actively and aggressively and unapologetically market our state to the united states and to the rest of the world and by doing that we have gotten people here in our state of florida that have never been here before we've moved them into parts of the state that have never been visited by many people before and some of our rural counties governor have done better in 2021 than they have ever done that was a flyover it was perfect timing on that flyover but so it's not just the big cities and the urban centers but it's also our rural counties and our natural experiences that are being uh discovered by the world and we're just so grateful to be here and i'll just tell you we don't make predictions that visit florida but with these domestic numbers once our international visitors are able to get back here look out because florida is going to continue to dominate the country in uh visitation and i think the operative word you've said it many times is freedom people are wanting freedom and they find it here in florida thank you governor

2022-02-18 02:02

Show Video

Other news