Date: 14 May 2026 Referencing style: Harvard Report code: 0872 Series: 09 Reception
The depiction of a sprawling, fictionalised Florida in Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA VI) has reignited a long-standing debate about the relationship between popular media and tourism flows. While Vice City itself is a thinly disguised Miami, Rockstar Games' expanded map — leaked materials and trailer footage suggest — extends southward through the Leonida Keys, an evident analogue of the Florida Keys archipelago stretching from Key Largo to Key West (Tassi, 2025). With the game's release scheduled for 19 November 2026, and trailers already viewed by hundreds of millions, regional tourism authorities, hoteliers, and conservationists are bracing for the so-called "set-jetting" phenomenon to reach the Overseas Highway. This report examines the projected and emerging tourism impacts on the Florida Keys, drawing on early industry forecasts, the comparative precedent of GTA V and Los Santos, and statements by the Monroe County Tourist Development Council and conservation NGOs.
Recent years have seen tourism boards across the world quantify the economic uplift produced when locations appear in blockbuster screen media. Expedia's annual travel trend report has tracked a 300 per cent rise in interest for filming locations between 2023 and 2025, coining the term "set-jetting" to describe travel motivated by exposure to film, television and video-game settings (Expedia Group, 2025). The phenomenon, traditionally associated with productions such as The White Lotus and Game of Thrones, has increasingly been observed for video-game locations, with Edinburgh, Dubrovnik and Iceland all reporting measurable bumps following high-profile game releases. Industry analysts at Skift have suggested that GTA VI, given its scale of cultural penetration, is likely to produce one of the largest set-jetting effects ever recorded for a single release (Habtemariam, 2025).
The Monroe County Tourist Development Council (TDC), which oversees marketing for the Florida Keys and Key West, has acknowledged GTA VI as a "once-in-a-generation marketing event for which we did not have to pay" (Florida Keys News, 2026). Stacey Mitchell, the TDC's marketing director, told local press that the agency was retooling its 2026–2027 digital campaign to capture search traffic from "Leonida Keys", "Vice City Keys" and related terms, anticipating that players curious about the real-world counterparts would translate online curiosity into bookings (Florida Keys News, 2026). Hotels in Key West reported a 12 per cent year-on-year increase in advance reservations for November and December 2026, the period immediately following GTA VI's release, with operators in Islamorada and Marathon citing similar patterns (Miami Herald, 2026). DFC Intelligence's projection of 40 million first-year unit sales (Financial Times, cited in Wikipedia, 2026) implies a global audience large enough to generate even single-digit conversion rates of meaningful tourism volume.
The history of the Grand Theft Auto franchise itself offers comparative evidence. Following the 2002 release of the original Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Miami experienced a documented spike in international visitor interest, with the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau noting Vice City as a recurring reference in European inbound surveys for several years afterwards (Greater Miami CVB, cited in Tassi, 2025). More recently, Los Angeles tourism officials have credited GTA V's depiction of Los Santos as one of several pop-cultural drivers sustaining the city's appeal among Gen-Z travellers (Habtemariam, 2025). The Keys, with their narrower carrying capacity and stronger emphasis on natural amenities, occupy a different position: the upside is potentially larger in relative terms but the risks of overtourism are correspondingly more acute.
Conservation groups have voiced caution. The Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, already strained by record visitation in 2024 and 2025, faces continued pressure on coral reefs, seagrass beds and the endangered Key deer population (NOAA, 2025). DeeVa Garel of the Florida Keys Environmental Coalition warned that "an additional surge driven by a video game where the in-game depiction explicitly encourages reckless driving and disregard for marine protected areas" could exacerbate well-documented problems with boat groundings and reef damage (Keys Weekly, 2026). The Overseas Highway, a single two-lane artery for much of its length, is similarly vulnerable to congestion-induced disruption. Monroe County officials have indicated that traffic management plans for the 2026–2027 high season will be reviewed with GTA VI tourism scenarios explicitly in mind (Miami Herald, 2026).
Small-business operators in the Keys have expressed cautious optimism. Charter fishing captains, scooter rental firms and bar owners along Duval Street in Key West reported preparing themed promotions, with at least three establishments registering "Leonida"-themed cocktail menus in early 2026 (Florida Keys News, 2026). The Hemingway Home and Museum noted that staff had begun receiving enquiries from younger visitors specifically asking whether the property would "appear in the game" (Keys Weekly, 2026), an indicator of the diffuse cultural anticipation surrounding the title.
The Florida Keys stand to benefit from one of the largest organic tourism marketing events in the region's history, even as they confront the environmental and infrastructural costs of additional visitation. Whether the projected uplift in arrivals translates into long-term economic gain will depend on the Monroe County TDC's capacity to channel set-jetting demand toward sustainable products, on Rockstar Games' eventual portrayal of the Leonida Keys, and on the willingness of state and federal agencies to invest in the protective infrastructure that an intensified post-GTA VI tourism cycle will require. What is clear is that, well before the game's 19 November 2026 release, the Keys' tourism economy has already begun to reorient itself around a fictional cartography that millions of players will soon traverse from their living rooms.
Expedia Group (2025) Unpack '25: The Trends in Travel. Available at: https://newsroom.expedia.com/unpack-25 (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Florida Keys News (2026) Tourism council eyes GTA VI windfall for Keys marketing campaign. 12 February. Available at: https://keysnews.com (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Habtemariam, D. (2025) Set-jetting goes gaming: why video games are the new travel inspiration. Skift, 18 September. Available at: https://skift.com (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Keys Weekly (2026) Conservationists warn of GTA VI tourism surge on Keys reefs. 4 March. Available at: https://keysweekly.com (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Miami Herald (2026) Florida Keys hotels report advance bookings spike ahead of GTA 6 launch. 22 January. Available at: https://miamiherald.com (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
NOAA (2025) Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary Condition Report 2025. Silver Spring, MD: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Available at: https://floridakeys.noaa.gov (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Tassi, P. (2025) How GTA 6 Could Reshape Florida Tourism. Forbes, 14 May. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Wikipedia (2026) Grand Theft Auto VI. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_VI (Accessed: 14 May 2026).