How important are travel and tourism dollars to Cincinnati? Jones Lang LaSalle recently charted the impact of tourism on Cincinnati, and it might surprise you to learn that the industry is one of the city’s strongest economic drivers.
According to Jones Lang LaSalle, the Cincinnati region hosted 22.7 million visitors in 2011, including both overnight and day visitors. That helped employment in the area’s tourism sector grow to 2.3 percent of the region’s total employment.
Of course, Cincinnati has invested heavily in the kind of entertainment areas that bring tourists and their dollars. The city boasts four new entertainment districts, The Banks, Horseshoe Casino, Broadway Commons and the Gateway Quarter. Jones Lang LaSalle predicts that these new entertainment districts will provide an additional boost to the area’s tourism business in 2013.
Can you guess how many hotel rooms Cincinnati’s Central Business District features? Try 2,969 spread out among eight hotels. This figure includes the 152 rooms at the new 21c Museum Hotel, which opened in November of 2012.
And as the number of tourists to Cincinnati continues to rise, it’s inspiring more developers to jump into the hotel industry here. Jones Lang LaSalle says that four new hotels are now either under construction or in the pre-development phase. This will add hundres of new hotel rooms to the city’s downtown market.
