San Francisco Travel Reports 24.6 Million Visitors in 2015

The San Francisco Travel Association reported today that San Francisco welcomed a total of 24.6 million visitors in 2015, an increase of 2.7% from 2014. This included 18.9 leisure visitors (up 2.7 % from 2014) and 5.8 million business travelers in 2015 (also up 2.7% from 2014).

　　(Source: www.gousa.cn)

In 2015, the 24.6 million visitors brought $9.3 billion in spending to San Francisco. Visitors directly spent $8.5 billion in the city, up 3.4 % from the previous year. An additional $723 million was spent by meeting planners and exhibitors for goods and services for their meetings. For the year, total spending in San Francisco related to meetings and conventions reached $2 billion.

The number of jobs supported by tourism rose 1 % to 76,520 jobs in 2015, with an annual payroll of $2.3 billion.

The tourism industry generated $738 million in taxes and fees for the City of San Francisco, up 12.8 % from the previous year. Major contributors to that figure include hotel tax (54.7 %) and property tax (23.4 %).

Visitor spending equated to $25.4 million daily or $1.1 million per hour.

On a per capita basis, visitors spent $10,951 per San Franciscan. Visitors generated $2,025 in taxes per San Francisco household.

Of the 24.6 million people who visited the city last year, 10.183 million were overnight visitors and spent $7.4 billion dollars. International overnight visitors totaled 2.85 million and spent $4.65 billion, which represented 63 % of all overnight spending. Overnight visitors from the United States totaled 7.33 million and spent $2.76 billion, representing 37 % of all overnight guest spending. Sixty-two % of all overnight guests stayed in hotels in the San Francisco.

San Francisco Travel has developed a new research model using internal data and curated research in conjunction with Tourism Economics. Several years of lodging data was curated by San Francisco Travel using research from STR (formerly Smith Travel Research) and PKF Consulting. Data for flight volume was provided by OAG (formerly Official Aviation Guide) and San Francisco International Airport. Domestic visitor data was collected by Longwoods. International visitor data by country came from Tourism Economics’ Global City Travel database and global visitor surveys by Destination Analysts as well as tax and household data. Group sales statistics were drawn from USI, San Francisco Travel’s CRM (customer relationship management) platform.

San Francisco Travel used their new model to revise data going back to 2008 to ensure consistency going forward.

The above data pertains only to visitors to San Francisco. For the first time, San Francisco Travel’s research also includes the city of San Francisco and Bay Area regional markets including Marin County, the Peninsula and San Francisco International Airport.

The Port of San Francisco hosted 82 ship calls and 297,504 passengers in 2015. In addition to passengers, each ship has approximately 1,000 crew members. This is a record number of passengers, breaking the previous high mark of 256,410 set in 2014. Based on passenger, crew, and ship expenditures, the overall economic impact to the Bay Area of a cruise ship call in San Francisco is approximately $1 million.

In 2015, San Francisco Travel booked 44 conventions at Moscone Center, which will fill 1,153,258 hotel room nights between 2015 and 2032. Their attendees and exhibitors will spend an estimated $1,001,190,532.