Marking a new record of visits, San Diego County had 7.6 million visitors for the first three months of 2018. The recent statistics by San Diego Tourism Authority confirms that the number of tourists visiting the county has increased considerably and so is the spending spree. The hotel bookings, museum visits, theme parks business have also gone higher and there were tourists who even visited the county just for a day.
The rise in number of tourists went up by 8.4 percent during the first quarter and their spending amounted to a total of $2.5 billion, which records a 5 percent increase as per the reports. 4 million overnight visitors visited the county and hotel occupancy climbed to 77 percent. A rise of 16.5 percent was recorded at San Diego’s major attractions like SeaWorld, zoo, Midway aircraft carrier, Legoland etc.
SeaWorld
The new visitor statistics was released on the same day of the Tourism Authority’s annual meeting. The San Diego Tourism has been gaining domestic and international importance recently. All credits to the Tourism Authority, who has been spending huge amount of money marketing the destination. Total media spending for this fiscal year will be $20.7 million compared to $18 million the previous year. The tourism authorities are also planning for a marketing budget of $21.5 million for the coming year.
San Diego was visited by a record number of 35 million visitors in 2017. “We’re encouraged by the improvements over the first quarter of last year. We’ve seen significant increases in visitation, so these are very positive numbers and last year was a record year, so how can we not be encouraged?” said Joe Terzi, CEO of the San Diego Tourism Authority.
However, Terzi is perturbed by the impression that family travel to San Diego has declined in the last few years. He believes it’s the same case with residents from Los Angeles. “Any new attraction is helpful, but it depends on what they can do to get the message out that there are new, exciting things happening at SeaWorld. We are working with them to assist. We also were able to get them featured in the new Visit California family spot, ‘Adventures in Kidifornia,’ that will be the key commercial running for the California campaign,” he added.
