Thursday marks Travel Rally Day—a national holiday celebrating the tourism industry and all it brings to destinations.

Discover the Palm Beaches CEO Milton Segarra said the numbers for quarter one of 20 to 24 are the strongest they’ve ever seen.

When it comes to data, 2.8 million visitors came to Palm Beach County in the first quarter of the year. They spent around $2.26 billion in the county, that’s a 4% increase from last year’s first quarter.

The county is also seeing 13% growth in visitors coming from abroad.

The CEO credits this great success to location, partnerships and engagement.

“We have one of the best destinations in the world. Number two, the team has discovered the Palm Beaches working in conjunction with the team at the county is making a powerful positioning of the destination” Segarra said. “The third one is that we’ve been able to identify exactly what we need to communicate, promote our brand and bring the technology to the next level to make sure that we engage correctly with our audiences.”

They also announced some big awards celebrating the best in tourism in our area.

The Ben hotel in Boca Raton won Accommodation Partner of the Year, and Visit Palm Beach won Partner of the Year in the non-accommodation category.

The biggest award of the morning – The Providencia Award – was given to Rick Rose. He’s a historian and tourism entrepreneur in the area.

WPTV’s Victor Jorges spoke to him moments after being recognized.

“The individuality of our destination is what makes it so special and different,” Rose said. “I realized when I was older that actually it’s our local history and our local culture, which makes us different than every other destination in the world.”

The county manager added the future is bright for tourism in Palm Beach County.

She thanked everyone who works in the industry for doing an “outstanding job” at making Palm Beach County a great place to live, work, play and visit.

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