Visitors to Chicago rose 60% in 2022, tourism group says – Chicago Sun-Times

View of downtown Chicago skyline from a Near South Side rooftop.Choose Chicago said nearly 48.9 million domestic and overseas visitors hit the town in 2022, an amount 60% higher than in 2021. The total is about 80% of the nearly 61 million visitors the agency tabulated for 2019, the last full year before the pandemic. It also said Chicago visitors spent nearly $17 billion in 2022, 89% of the level in 2019.
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The Paracete
2 years ago

Am I reading this wrong or did they have 60 tourists. That works when it’s a 60%increase from a base of zero……..i’ll fall for it!

Streeterville
2 years ago

60% increase over nearly zero tourists during 2020 – 2021 Covid lock-down period not something to brag about. Another example of manipulated statistics.

Weren’t Chicago hotels technically closed unless serving as quarantine quarters for homeless folks?

debtsor
2 years ago

“48.9 million domestic and overseas visitors”

Chicago only has 2.4 million people but had nearly 50,000,000 visitors….really? Does anyone really believe this? O’Hare last year had 68,340,619 passengers, most of whom who were passing through to other places. Ok so maybe they are using car passengers too, but what Midwestern local yokel says they’re going to visit Chicago? When I travel and say that I’m from Chicago most people ask me why I live there!

debtsor
2 years ago
Reply to  debtsor

These stats from Choose Chicago are a little old, from 2021, not 2022, but this is what they say:

https://cdn.choosechicago.com/uploads/2022/06/Chicago-Tourism-Overview_6-15-22.pdf

2019 had 60.83 Million visitors. 46.54 million of them were for leisure and over half of leisure trips were for the day only, not overnight.

So they’re basically counting suburbanites from Morton Grove eating at Zia’s in Edison Park, Chicago, as tourists.

This is complete insanity.

Freddy
2 years ago

From 10 visitors to 16.

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