A chill on tourism in Florida’s ‘Little Quebec’ | CNN

On a sunny and warm late-February day at Richard’s Motel in Hollywood, Florida, guests mostly from Quebec and Ontario dipped into the swimming pool and gathered for morning coffee and conversation in a courtyard the hotel’s Quebecois owner calls the Parc de l’Amitié, or Friendship Park. The motel’s aesthetic mixes Florida and the far north. Here a snow man statue and wooden fence covered with Canadian license plates, there a sea turtle statue and a tiki bar. Only one thing seemed off on this balmy high-season morning — a Vacancy sign illuminated to the right of the motel’s office door. Come winter, beach towns like this one dotting the Atlantic Coast stretch of Florida surrounding Fort Lauderdale have long brimmed with French Canadian tourists and other snowbirds who arrive for warmth and sunshine. Alongside Florida’s famous beaches, they enjoy Canadian-owned restaurants serving some of their favorite foods, shows featuring some of Quebec’s biggest homegrown stars who fly in to perform and other glimmers of home that have sprung up in the area. But this winter wasn’t what Richard’s Motel owner Richard Clavet and other hoteliers in the area had hoped for. Destin