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Florida Tourism Numbers Are Up

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MIAMI (CBSMiami/NSF) -- Florida's tourism numbers are up in the first three months of the year.

Visit Florida, the state's tourism-marketing arm, said Friday that 28.4 million visitors came to the state during the first quarter of 2015, up 6.2 percent from the previous year.

The total was the largest number of visitors in state history over a three-month period.

Gov. Rick Scott and Visit Florida Chief Executive Officer Will Seccombe said the state could top their goal of having 100 million visitors in 2015.

"For every job in the tourism industry, we are creating another job outside the industry to support that,'' Seccombe said."In construction, logistics, and infrastructure development, the tourism industry has clearly been driving the Florida economy. It's strong and it looks to be getting stronger."

(The News Service of Florida contributed to this report.)

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