Thank you, Taylor Thanks in part to Taylor Swift’s concerts in the city last fall, tourists spent $8.8 billion in Toronto last year, the highest level of visitor spending ever recorded in the city. The nine million overnight visitors to Toronto last year are the most since the pandemic, though still 600,000 fewer than the number of visitors welcomed in 2019, according to the year-end report Toronto’s Visitor Economy: 2024 Market Performance Highlights published today by Destination Toronto. “Toronto’s visitor economy is proving once again to be an engine for the city, drawing almost 9 billion dollars of new money Read more
Toronto Tourism
Visitors to Toronto spent a record $8.4 billion last year, money that helped provide jobs for hotel workers, entertainers, restaurant wait staff and so many more. The report on the Economic Impact of Visitors in Toronto, found that 26.5 million visitors arrived in the city of Toronto in 2023, and spent $8.4 billion across a wide range of sectors, including accommodations (26 per cent), local and air transport (26 per cent), dining (24 per cent), shopping (13 per cent), and entertainment (11 per cent). Beyond this direct spending, the effects of induced and indirect spending reach even further into the broader Read more
There’s a new face in charge of promoting tourism for Canada’s biggest city. Destination Toronto today announced the appointment of Andrew Weir as President & CEO, effective May 1. Weir has been an integral member of the leadership team at Destination Toronto for the past 18 years, most recently as Executive Vice President. A proven leader in Toronto’s tourism industry, Weir has served on numerous boards across the industry, including Destination International’s DMAP Board and as Chair of the Tourism Industry Association of Ontario (TIAO) from 2021-2023. “Having conducted a thorough North American search, we are thrilled to announce Read more
The annual Trip Advisor Best Beaches List is out again, and there’s plenty to like. For the world, Trip Advisor users named Baia de Sancho on the idyllic island of Fernando de Noronha in Brazil as the top beach, followed by Eagle Beach in Aruba and Cable Beach in Broome, Western Australia. I haven’t made it to Cable Beach, but I can tell you that beaches in Western Australia are some of the best – and least crowded – in the world. In world voting, Grace Bay in the Turks and Caicos was fifth, Varadero Beach in Cuba ninth and Read more
A new study of downtown Toronto commerce shows the tourism industry has bounced back nicely from the pandemic. But we’re not out of the woods yet. The Toronto Star on Thursday ran a story that talked about a University of Toronto School of Cities study that looked at cellphone usage in the city centre to determine the number of daily visitors to various types of buildings. Looking at 2019 levels versus 2023, the study found that Toronto’s hospitality buildings had a 100% recovery rate in terms of visitors. The recovery rate for office buildings was only 69%, and for retail Read more
