Washington DC (TAN): As many as 23.8 million people visited the US capital in 2018, up 4.4% YoY, Destination DC said in a statement. Domestic tourists formed the bulk of the visitors with international tourist numbers plunging during the period.
“Our goal as an economic development organization is to drive visitation and create revenue for the District, so we’re thrilled to see the results of an additional one million visitors last year,” Destination DC President and CEO Elliott L. Ferguson said. “Tourism spending also supported 76,522 jobs in DC across all industries, which is the largest number we’ve seen in 10 years.”
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Visitor spending in 2018 was a record USD 7.8 billion, up 4.3% YoY, resulting in USD 851 million in local taxes realized by the district. Without tourism, nearly 300,000 DC households would have to contribute an additional USD 2,844 per household in taxes in order to maintain the current level of tax receipts.
Leisure travellers accounted for 61% of visitors and 43% of spending. Leisure spending is up 13%. Business travellers accounted for 39% of visitors and 57% of spending.
“With more to see and do across all eight wards of DC, we are proud to continue welcoming visitors from all around the world,” said Mayor Muriel Bowser.
In 2018, Washington, DC had 21.9 million domestic visitors, up 5.2%. The city welcomed 1.9 million overseas visitors during this time, down 5.3%. DC’s top overseas market is China, with 226,000 visitors, down 25%.
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“The data shows that Chinese visitation is down to the US overall, especially when it comes to vacation and first-time visitors, which DC tends to see a bigger share of,” said Ferguson. “There are bright spots in the China market, however, with length of stay up 27% and room nights up 72%, so it’s more important than ever to maintain our strong market presence. In addition to leveraging in-market representation in China, India and Australia, we’ll build on the momentum of rebounds as seen in an uptick in visitors from the UK and Brazil.”
DC’s top 10 markets, in order of visitation, are China, the UK, India, Germany, Brazil, Australia, France, South Korea, Italy and Spain. Though overseas visitors only represent 8% of the total number of visitors to DC, international visitors [overseas visitors plus visitors from Canada and Mexico] represent 27% of the visitor spending.
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