A mix of successes and challenges for Santa Monica’s tourism industry has left officials in a mindset of “tentative optimism” looking into 2024 and beyond.
On May 2, local leaders gathered at Hotel Casa Del Mar for the 15th annual Santa Monica Travel & tourism Summit, featuring an unveiling of the 2023 tourism Economic and Fiscal Impact summary report for the city. The report tracked the ongoing recovery of Santa Monica’s travel industry coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, and touched on statistics like visitor spending, job creation and generated tax revenues.
In 2023, Santa Monica had 4,637,700 visitors, which was a 12.8% decrease from the 2022 total of 5,320,500. While this also meant total visitor days were down from 2022, a 9% decrease, the average length of visitor stay was up from 1.4 days in 2022 to 1.46 days in 2023.
Visitor spending was deemed another challenge, as the city was unable to hit the billion-dollar mark, with visitors spending $938.1…
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