Key West and Tourism

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I just got back from a week trip down in Key West with the family.  We spent a lot of time diving, snorkeling, site seeing, and diving.  I had my first encounter with underwater with both a nurse shark and reef shark.  Scary, but very fun.

The whole week we were down there, we noticed that the locals were not the most hospitable.  In talking with them, it seems as if tourism is down considerably, and they are feeling the pain from less dollars being injected into their local economy.  Interestingly, it seemed as if there were large numbers of European tourists, probably due to the falling dollar.  Certainly the increase in fuel costs are hurting all the local boaters who have seen their costs driven up while the amount they can charge tourists has not been able to increase proportionally.

For example, we went out with Capt Sheri at Wild About Dolphins and she told us her cost per trip in terms of fuel has increased from ~$30 to ~$75.  Basically that is $90 a day out of her pocket and into Exxon’s.  Just shows how the fuel costs are hurting everyone…

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3 thoughts on “Key West and Tourism

  1. Matt

    sorry you had a bad impression of our Key West tourism industry folks. Times are getting hard down here, as Americans aren’t traveling as much. Luckily there are a lot of Euros coming. Unfortunately, the Euros come as part of a packaged tour group. Unless your business is part of their tour package, they probably won’t be visiting you. American tourists are more free wandering, just looking around on their own for something to do.

    In any case, you’d think that the workers would treat you really good. Since they are hurting for money, they’d want you to come back.

    If you come back, look me up, and I’ll show you my 1973 240z.

  2. gsmith Post author

    Thanks for the comment Matt. Sorry if I came across too harsh, we met quite a few very friendly folks as well, such as Capt Sherri. But, overall it seemed as if folks dependent on the tourism trade were not happy. I feel bad for them, and hopefully the economy will turn around soon.

    I would love to see your Z next time! Not too many of them left up North…

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