Tourism in Indian River County continues to outpace statewide and national trends, exceeding numbers for last year and projections for this year, according to just-released tourist tax figures for the first seven months of 2025.

While tourism statewide has been flat, or down slightly, according to multiple sources, with a 20 percent drop in the number of Canadian visitors, tourist taxes collected from Jan. 1 to July 31 in Indian River County were up 18.3 percent compared to the same period last year.

The number of Canadian visitors to the state has fallen well below forecast levels due to animosity stirred up by U.S. trade and immigration policies, including President Trump’s threat to annex Canada, which outraged many Canadians. The dip began in February and deepened through spring and summer, according to Tourism Economics, a leading global forecasting and quantitative analysis company.

Even though 34.4 million travelers visited Florida in the second quarter of this year, according to Visit Florida, that number is essentially flat compared to the same period last year.

But Vero Beach and Indian River County have managed to forge ahead, collecting $353,580 in tourist taxes in July, for a total of $4,916,622 in the first seven months of the year.

“Although we are a smaller destination than, say, Orlando, Tampa or Miami, we do hold our own and have a very strong collection amount,” said Ben Earman, the county’s vice president of Tourism and Marketing.

Indian River County’s tourism numbers are regularly equal to or higher than collections in neighboring counties to the north and south, according to Earman.

Current trends see vacationers planning further ahead, instead of taking last-minute trips, Earman added, noting that, because of inflation and a lagging economy, people are looking for bargains when they travel.

Summer 2025 was one of the hottest on record, with the Treasure Coast sweltering through above-average heat and humidity from June to September, but that wasn’t enough to keep visitors away from the little city “where the tropics begin.”

“The heat didn’t seem to affect us much at all,” Earman said, noting that while hotel rentals were down slightly, more visitors wheeled their luggage into vacation rentals this year than last year.
Earman expects tourism revenue to trend upward during the fall and winter, as it reliably does at this time every year.