Sarasota County drew more visitors this March than it did a year earlier. Getting them to spend more money, however, was another matter.

The county welcomed an estimated 158,500 visitors staying in paid accommodations in March 2026, up 1.7 percent from 155,800 visitors in March 2025, according to Visit Sarasota County’s latest visitor dashboard. But direct visitor expenditures were nearly flat, dipping 0.1 percent to $234.3 million. Total economic impact also slipped 0.1 percent, to an estimated $330.4 million.

Erin Duggan, president and CEO of Visit Sarasota County, says the split reflects what the organization’s research firm has described as a “K-shaped economy,” with affluent travelers continuing to spend freely while more budget-conscious visitors pull back.

That pattern, she says, is showing up in Sarasota’s tourism economy. The county’s average lodging rate reached $402.36 in March, the highest March rate Visit Sarasota County has recorded, up 4.2 percent from a year earlier. Yet the report attributed the slight decline in overall direct spending in part to softer restaurant and entertainment spending.

“The high-income visitors are still spending more,” Duggan says. “We’ve been benefiting from that. But the spending on restaurants and entertainment by those high-income visitors only makes up for a portion of the belt-tightening from the rest of the economy."

March Data: More Visitors, Shorter Stays, Less Discretionary Spending

The March figures offer a mixed snapshot of Sarasota’s peak visitor season. More people came, but they also appear to have stayed for less time. Room nights sold fell 1.9 percent, from 373,000 in March 2025 to 365,800 this March. Duggan says the most likely explanation is “the shorter stay.”

Overall lodging occupancy also softened, declining from 83.3 percent to 81.5 percent. But revenue per available room (RevPAR), still rose 2 percent, to $327.92, buoyed by higher nightly prices.

“I think March is always the month to do that,” Duggan says of room rates tracking higher. “But I think we’re going to see strong [April data], too.”

She points to demand from group travel as one sign of strength. “We had groups contacting us six months ago and we weren’t able to find the room blocks because the hotels were already close to sold out,” she says.

And hotels in particular did have a strong March. Hotel occupancy rose 1.2 percent; average room rates climbed 11.4 percent, to $353.28; and hotel RevPAR jumped 12.7 percent. However, vacation rentals moved in the opposite direction: occupancy dropped 5.2 percent, average rates fell 1.7 percent and RevPAR declined 6.8 percent. 

Duggan says several forces may be at work. Some vacation rentals, she notes, remain offline after last year’s storms. 

The city’s vacation rental rules may also be weighing on that sector. Sarasota now requires short-term rentals within city limits to comply with a minimum stay of seven days and nights, along with expanded registration requirements and multiple fees. Visit Sarasota County plans to meet with vacation rental partners to hear what they are seeing and discuss possible marketing strategies, Duggan says.

The March increase in visitation comes against a broader backdrop of softer tourism numbers. Fiscal year to date—covering October 2025 through March 2026—visitation among travelers staying in paid accommodations is down 4.4 percent from the same period a year earlier, to 583,100 visitors. Direct expenditures are down 3.4 percent, to $868.8 million, and total economic impact is down by the same percentage, to an estimated $1.22 billion. 

And the latest annual report suggests that cooling did not begin this year. In fiscal year 2024, paid-accommodation visitors fell 7.7 percent from the year before; room nights fell 6.8 percent; and occupancy dropped from 71.4 percent to 64.8 percent, even as average room rates rose.

Still Duggan says, overall, the local tourism economy is "stable," adding that the “storm hangover” from 2024's catastrophic hurricane season, which lingered into last fall, has faded. 

International Travel Shows Decrease, Too

International travel remains one of the more unsettled pieces of the tourism picture. Visit Sarasota County’s March dashboard says all international regions continue to show significant year-over-year decreases in visitation. That contrasts with fiscal year 2024, when visitation from Canada rose 4.4 percent and travel from the United Kingdom increased 8.4 percent among visitors staying in paid accommodations.

That international demand is important, Duggan says, because overseas travelers tend to stay longer and spend more than domestic visitors. 

She says Visit Sarasota County’s representative in the United Kingdom recently told the organization’s board that economic pressure abroad looks similar to the United States: middle- and lower-income travelers are tightening their budgets, while wealthier visitors remain more willing to spend. Duggan says she has not personally heard politics cited as a major reason for weaker international travel, though the organization’s research firm encounters that sentiment at times.

“For a lot of Brits and Germans, maybe they don’t like the politics, but they like beautiful beaches,” Duggan says.

As summer approaches, Duggan says local hotels sound more upbeat than they have in some recent periods, helped by what she describes as a good March and what she expects may prove to be a solid April. Visit Sarasota County, she says, is already marketing future visits months in advance, though lower summer and early fall rates also provide an opening to appeal to more budget-conscious travelers.

For now, March’s numbers tell a tourism story with two currents running through it: Sarasota is still attracting visitors and its luxury market remains strong. But the broader economy is leaving a mark that's showing up in shorter stays, softer discretionary spending and a year-to-date tourism picture that has yet to fully recover its footing.