Tourism data is better seasoned

Everyone knows tourism in Florida spikes in the winter and slows in the summer.

That's why it's hard to draw meaningful conclusions from the tourist-tax data from one month to the next. For example, there's a good chance May's tax collections will be lower than April's because the shoulder month after Easter is typically slower.

To provide more meaningful data to the tourism industry, Florida Gulf Coast University's Gary Jackson recently started providing seasonally adjusted tourist-tax data for Charlotte, Collier and Lee counties as part of a monthly economic report he publishes as the director of the Regional Economic Research Institute at FGCU.