Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board (L.A. Tourism) president & CEO Ernest Wooden Jr. announced that Los Angeles welcomed 47.3m visitors in 2016, surpassing mid-year forecasts and breaking visitation records for the sixth consecutive year.
The new record is 1.7m visitors higher than 2015’s total, an increase of 3.8 per cent from the previous year.
New tourism records were set for overall domestic and international visitation. Total domestic visitation reached 40.2m, a 3.8 per cent increase over 2015, and 7.1m international visitors made Los Angeles their ultimate destination, a 3.5 per cent increase over the previous year.
In 2016, Los Angeles also became the first ever U.S. city destination to welcome more than 1 million visitors from China, the destination’s number two international market behind Mexico. China alone accounted for 75 per cent of the destination’s overall international growth, derived from the market’s year-over-year growth of nearly 22 per cent – the seventh consecutive year of at least 20 per cent visitation growth for China.
The U.K. saw an increase of 2.3 per cent from 2015, totalling 362,000 visitors in 2016.
“Tourism is booming in Los Angeles, and it’s helping to drive our whole city’s economy forward,” said Mayor Garcetti. “My goal is to welcome 50m tourists to our city by 2020, and new attractions like the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will have even more people from around the world lining up to come to L.A.”
L.A. County’s average occupancy rate for 2016 reached 81.3 per cent, surpassing 80 per cent for the first time in County history. A record 29.2 million hotel room nights were sold countywide with ADR reaching a new high of $171.95, an increase of 8.6 per cent over 2015. L.A. County is the only U.S. market to reach double-digit RevPar growth at nearly 11 per cent.
Tourism is among the largest and healthiest contributors to the Los Angeles economy, supporting an average of more than 500,000 jobs in the Leisure & Hospitality sector last year.
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