Does Columbus, Ohio Really Have 50 Million Visitors?

In May, Experience Columbus released its visitor data for 2023: It touted 51.2 million visitors to the region — an all-time record, the destination marketing organization for Ohio’s largest city said.

It’s a stunning claim and would mean that Columbus had the same amount of visitors as much larger cities.  

“Absolutely incredible that this consulting firm paid by the city is saying more visitors came to Columbus than Chicago last year. This would be 1 out of 6 Americans visiting Columbus,” wrote Max Littman, a special investigations editor for The Rooster, an Ohiocentric blog focused on Columbus, on X.

All destinations release similar data, but there’s no standard measure for what a visitor is. For tourism boards, the metric is key: Politicians look at visitor numbers – along with other data that shows economic impact – when determining how much money to allocate to tourism promotion.

One tourism board consultant told us they have had to bend their definition of a visitor to satisfy a client.  

”You can’t go to a client and say forget about half of your [visitor] spending because we define travel as 50 miles and half your spending comes from people [traveling] less than 20 miles,” said the consultant, who asked to remain anonymous. “It’s mainly a tool in a toolbox of data that is used to justify funding and the political benefits of having a marketing organization.”

Here are some of the assumptions that go into Experience Columbus’ number:

• Total trips: If you visit your mom for Mother’s Day and then again for July 4, you’re counted twice – it’s “not the unique number of visitors,” according to Brian Ross, president and CEO of Experience Columbus.
• “Person trips”: If you bring your spouse and two children on one of the visits, that’s four “person trips,” said Amir Eylon, CEO and president of Longwoods International, the consultants hired by Experience Columbus. 
• Duration: There’s no minimum amount of time you need to stay to count as a visitor. It would include overnight guests passing through on the way to another destination and day trippers who head to Columbus to have lunch, said Eylon. About 80% of person trips to Columbus are day trips.
• Distance: Day trippers count if they traveled 50 miles or more from their home and went back. Overnight trippers count as long as they are away from home. Both business or leisure travelers would be visitors. 

(By this logic, Skift reporter Dawit Habtemariam counted as three visitors when spending a summer in Wilmington, Ohio, and driving into Columbus on separate trips to go to the farmers’ market, to see the Capitol building and to explore the city.) 

In a statement, Experience Columbus defended its numbers and noted that it had never made comparisons to other destinations.

“We have shared that destinations use different reporting methods and that it’s not a simple apples-to-apples comparison. We stand by our numbers as explained throughout past communication and have used the same research partners for over a decade to have consistent benchmarking. We also utilize the same research partners as the state of Ohio, as we believe consistency across the state is critical when tracking and reporting visitation and direct visitor spend.” 

Why Visitor Numbers Matter

Visitors to a destination drive spending at local businesses, support local jobs, and generate tax revenue. 

“Every year we collect all these fees. We could decide to give them less if we decided they didn’t utilize their funding correctly,” said Daniel Rickenmann, mayor of Columbia, South Carolina, referring to the economic impact of tourism boards.

In November 2022, Orange County, Florida’s board of commissioners was discussing significantly reducing the amount of lodging tax dollars that went to Visit Orlando’s multimillion-dollar budget.

In his public hearing to commissioners, Visit Orlando Board Chair Terry Prather pointed to the destination’s 74 million visitors that year. He said they generated $87 billion in economic impact and $6.2 billion in state and local taxes and supported 450,000 workers.

“With numbers like that at stake, now is not the time I believe to pull back on our advertising and sales,” said Prather. “Some things that we do now, we wouldn’t do, whether it’s reach, frequency, the way we advertise around the world.”

Comparing Cities Is Tough

Longwoods International, Omnitrak, and DK Shifflet are among the dominant research firms that estimate visitor volume for tourism boards. 

Others include geolocation mobile tracking companies like Arrivalist. Some destinations like Las Vegas Conventions and Visitors Authority have in-house research teams.

Each has its own definition. 

Chicago, with 51.96 million visitors in 2023, uses DK Shifflet, which for day trippers, goes by the UN Tourism definition of a visitor: “A visitor is a traveler taking a trip to a main destination outside his/her usual environment, for less than a year, for any main purpose (business, leisure or other personal purpose) other than to be employed by a resident entity in the country or place visited.” 

Those who spend the night at a destination are counted as overnight visitors, said Nandini Nadkarni, vice president of data operations of DK Shifflet’s Travel Performance Data. The overnight stay can be part of a stop to another destination.

The visitors don’t need to have traveled a minimum distance to count. A family of four traveling 10 miles from their home on a day trip to Chicago for a festival counts as four visitors, said Nadkarni. 

DK Shifflet does, however, track miles traveled and will put a cutoff distance for its reported visitor estimate if requested by the client. Most clients prefer not to have the cutoff in their reported estimates, said Sindy Diab, vice president of DK Shifflet’s Travel Performance Data.  

Destinations often switch between research firms. “At times some governmental entities don’t feel that comfortable going for years on end with the same vendor,” said Diab. “It goes back and forth.” Tennessee, for example, has worked with both DK Shifflet and Longwoods International in the past 10 years.

Visit California uses language laid out in the California Tourism Marketing Act. It says travel and tourism revenue can only be derived from “people who travel at least fifty miles from home, one way, for purposes other than commuting to work or school; or have an overnight accommodation as part of the travel, regardless of the distance or purpose traveled.” 

But it uses a different definition than other California DMOs. For example, San Diego Tourism Authority counts “anyone coming in from outside San Diego County” as a visitor, including day-trippers, said Paul Garcia, director of communications.

In a report released this April, Visit California acknowledges the discrepancy: “Some destinations in California calculate visitation and economic impacts using different definitions of visitors and different data-gathering methods, so figures may not match,” the report said.

Hawaii Tourism Authority excludes day trippers and defines visitors as those who stay at least one night but less than one year. For 2023, the state said it had 9.6 million visitors.

The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis defines a visitor as a person who stays overnight at a paid accommodation or travels more than 50-100 miles from their area of normal, everyday activities for less than a year.

“Different destinations quantify their visitation differently,” said Kevin Bagger, vice president of the research center for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA). “There’s no one single formal method that everybody uses for estimating the visitation.”

Should Friends and Relatives Count?

Many tourism bureaus include visiting friends and relatives. In Columbus’ case, it was by far the number one reason for visits, accounting for 52% of the total. The next highest reason was business travel, at 14%. 

Some researchers remove this segment when assessing the return on investment in destination marketing. In its review of Visit Florida, for example, Florida’s state economic agency does not include friends and relatives.

Experience Columbus said its reported trips would drop if the visiting friends and relatives as their main purpose category was removed. The total number of visitors in 2023 would decrease from 51.2 million to 28.7 million.

“At the end of the day, it’s a significant portion, it’s a portion that’s going to come to you and is not subject to competitive forces because they are going for the purpose of visiting that friend or relative located inside that destination,” said Eylon. “[Visiting friends and relatives] is important and it’s more important to some destinations than others.”

Ross said Experience Columbus “greatly influences” this travel through the perception of the destination. “If your relative doesn’t live in an appealing place to visit, the family may choose to meet in another location in the middle, choose another family member to visit, etc,” he said.  
 
The tourism bureau can also encourage this segment to get out of their host’s home and explore the destination, Ross said.

Long-Running Issue

Bagger from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), said the lack of standard methodology has been a pain point for decades. 

“The things visitation numbers touch on vary by destination,” he said. “If you’re a geographically isolated destination like Las Vegas is, we have comparatively very few day trips.” 

The number of hotel rooms is an influence as well. “All of those things come into play and because of that, it’s very difficult to compare visitation numbers from one destination to the next,” said Bagger. 

The LVCVA’s visitation estimates are primarily based on hotel occupancy data and based on a model in use since the early 1970’s.  

“At the end of the day, they are all estimates. The only way to do an exact count is to do a census,” said Longwoods’ Eylon.