Word: florida
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Despite all the fun and frolic, there was some doubt that Florida's tourist business this year will catch up with the record $952 million set in 1952-53. when 5.000,000 tourists crowded into the state. Vacancy signs still swung outside some motels and hotels, and nightclub, owners complained of tightening pursestrings...
Changing Times. With changing times and shifting wealth, Florida's tourist trade has also changed. More "people go there than ever before, but they stay for shorter periods and spend, less per capita. To handle the increasing numbers of tourists, more hotels (7.064 rooms) have been built in Greater Miami since the war than in all the rest of the U.S. Last week, in the $200.000 Miami Beach house where Harvey Firestone once wintered, building contractors pored over plans to build the city's biggest hotel, the $11 million, 554-room Fontainebleau. on the site...
...most notable development in Florida's tourist business has been the growth of motels. Some of them, like La Coquille. opened last week by Rockefeller Heir Spelman Prentice at Palm Beach, are equipped (and priced) for the Ferrari trade, with swimming pools, air-conditioning and room service. But for miles along the highways there are others with prices more in reach of the man who is still working toward his first million (an average of $15 a day, v. $30 in hotels...
...Calamity. The change in tourism, however, is not the biggest change in Florida. In fact, the most notable thing about Florida in 1954 is that tourism is no longer the beginning and end of the state's economy. In other times, a slow-starting tourist season might have meant a statewide calamity. Now it means no such thing...
...economy itself has changed. Tourism accounts for one-third of the state's business and the value of manufactured products ($1.3 billion in 1952) is half again as big. With new industries springing up from one end of the state to the other, the population of Florida has grown faster in the last three years (up 30% to 3,600,000) than that of any other eastern state. Since the war. non-farm employment has soared 51% to 837,500. In short, Florida, long the playboy of the states, is fast growing into economic maturity...