Published on : Thursday, August 30, 2018
About 2 million overseas visitors from countries other than Canada and Mexico, came to D.C. last year, marking a 2.5 percent increase from 2016, when the number fell 1.7 percent.
Destination D.C., the city’s tourism marketing organization, released the numbers yesterday using international visitor data from the U.S. Department of Commerce and its own survey of international travelers.
For the past three years, D.C.’s international overseas visitor numbers have fluctuated slightly above or below 2 million.
D.C. hosted the U.S. Travel Association’s IPW meeting, which is a large gathering of international travel agents, tour operators and travel journalists in June last year. Officials estimated that the meeting would boost overseas tourism to the city, bringing anywhere between 700,000 to 1.1 million additional overseas visitors in the three years following the meeting.
However, city officials feared that the impact of IPW might be diminished given President Donald Trump’s travel bans and a perception that the U.S. isn’t welcoming the international community.
Destination D.C. CEO Elliott Ferguson said, “While we were thrilled to see growth in overseas visitation, we are faced with certain realities about the political climate and how the U.S. is perceived from a global perspective. That’s why we’re doing everything we can to welcome the global community and increase our representation internationally in established and emerging markets.”
China continued to make up the largest group of overseas visitors to the U.S.; 324,000 Chinese nationals visited D.C. in 2017, up 6.6 percent from the previous year. Destination D.C. has also planned to attract Chinese visitors, including a new marketing program on Chinese social media app WeChat.
Tags: district of columbia