Does Columbus, Ohio Really Have 50 Million Visitors?
Photo Credit: Photo Credit: Randall Schieber Experience Columbus / Randall Schieber
Skift Take
All destinations estimate how many travelers visit, and it’s an important data point for showing a destination management organization's economic impact.
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
