Foreign flights to Orlando on the up and up...

We here at MRI are starting to notice the effects of this up-turn in people arriving in Orlando:

Tourism & Travel

Foreign flights to Orlando pick up slack at airport
Jason Garcia and Scott Powers | Sentinel Staff Writers
August 4, 2008
Overall passenger traffic may have slipped 3.3 percent at Orlando International Airport in June compared with a year earlier, but international travel continues to be a bright spot.

The airport's international traffic rose nearly 10 percent in June compared with the same month a year ago. And it was up more than 23 percent through the first half of the year. The growth has been fueled in large part by new service from Germany's Lufthansa and Ireland's Aer Lingus, as well as increased service from carriers such as British Airways and Copa Airlines.

Also helping is the weak U.S. dollar, which makes American vacations cheaper for foreign tourists.

The same forces are also driving big gains in international traffic across the country. The federal government reported last week that international travel to the U.S. as a whole jumped 14 percent in May compared with the same month in 2007. Travel to the U.S. was up 12 percent through the first five months of the year.

What's more, spending by international tourists has ballooned 22 percent so far this year -- to more than $57 billion.