Philadelphia reports record numbers for 2015

Visit Philadelphia is reporting its sixth straight year for record visitation, announcing that 41 million people visited the five-county region in 2015, with 88 per cent visiting for a leisure purpose.

The year also brought record highs for tourism’s economic impact, which came in at $10.7 billion for the year.

“Each year, more people visit Philadelphia, more people stay overnight and more people find reasons to visit every month of the year, not just during the warm-weather months or for big events,” Meryl Levitz, president and CEO, Visit Philadelphia, stated in a release. “They’re also spending more while they’re here, and that’s a major plus for the region’s economy.”

Visit Philadelphia is also citing leisure as a major driver of hotel occupancy. Of the 3.1 million hotel room nights occupied in Center City Philadelphia in 2015, 32 per cent were leisure stays, which equals to one out of every three rooms.

That’s 983,000 leisure room nights, the organization reports, which is an increase of 287 per cent since Visit Philadelphia started marketing the region as a leisure destination in 1997.