Visit Anaheim, the official destination marketing organization (DMO) of Anaheim, confirmed today that Anaheim has set a new visitor volume record in 2016. For the fourth year in a row, Anaheim broke the previous record by welcoming more than 23 million visitors.
Overall visitor growth in Anaheim is up 2.3 percent from 2015, leading to a nearly 33 percent growth since 2011. Anaheim visitors also spent 7.2 percent more in Orange County in 2016 than the previous year, contributing $8.1 billion to the local economy. Over the last five years, total visitor spending jumped 74 percent. A full report on visitor and destination growth will be available this spring.
“Anaheim is a magical destination that continues to inspire and delight domestic and international visitors year after year,” said Jay Burress, president & CEO, Visit Anaheim. “2016 was a monumental year for our city as we saw renewed commitment from our greater tourism industry to invest in the destination. More hotels were proposed and built, theme park expansion was announced, number of breweries doubled – paving the way for us to welcome even more visitors to our awe-inspiring city.”
Anaheim continues to thrive as a popular meetings and convention destination. The Anaheim Convention Center, the largest convention center on the West Coast hosted many events in 2016 that reached record attendance levels, including National Association of Music Merchants’ annual convention, Natural Products Expo West and California Dental Association. Growing event attendance was welcomed by Anaheim and Garden Grove hotels which added more than 1,400 rooms in 2016 to the overall hotel inventory of the two cities.
Anaheim Visitor Numbers 2011-2016 (Source: CIC Research, Inc.)
• 2011: 17.38 million
• 2012: 18.43 million
• 2013: 18.70 million
• 2014: 21.74 million
• 2015: 22.5 million
• 2016 (preliminary): 23 million
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