After a difficult year, Orlando International Airport's total passenger traffic grew by 2.45% to 2.6m in November 2009 compared with the same month in 2008, recording increases in both international (17.35%) and domestic (+1.07%) traffic.

Year-to-date airport traffic reached nearly 30.9m passengers and the international traffic increase was helped by a rise in the number of global flights in November. Of 146 new weekly flights into Orlando in November, more than one-quarter operated on international routes to destinations including San Salvador, El Salvador; Cancun, Mexico; and Montreal, Hamilton, Ottawa, London and Winnipeg, Canada.

The increase will be good news for Aldeasa which is the duty free and travel retail operator at both Orlando International Airport and Sanford Airport in Florida. The latter airport has suffered particularly over the last year, handling 220,143 international departing passengers between January and November 2009 – a -41.76% decline on the 378,024 international passengers handled over the same period in 2008.

Meanwhile, New York has remained the most popular US destination for international visitors in 2009, recording 8.6m which is twice as many as its nearest competitor, Los Angeles. International visitors spend nearly five times as much as their domestic counterparts, and every dollar of direct tourist spending translates into a total of $1.50 in economic activity, according to a statement by the city.