By Steve Huettel, Times Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Amidst signs that Pinellas tourism is pulling out of a two-year slump, one important part of the business remains in decline.
The British aren't coming. Or at least not in the numbers they did before.
An estimated 50,000 fewer Europeans stayed overnight in Pinellas for the first 10 months of 2010, a drop of 6.4 percent from a year earlier, according to Research Data Services in Tampa. Tourists from the United Kingdom traditionally make up about 70 percent of European visitors to Pinellas, with Germans accounting for most of the rest.
"Europe will come back (next year),'' said Walter Klages, president of Research Data, which conducts visitor surveys for the county's tourism agency. "The British market, no. The German market very definitely will.''
The decline hurts because Europeans stay longer and spend more than domestic tourists ...