More than three years after COVID-19 decimated the tourism industry, San Diego has come roaring back, with visitor spending during the last fiscal year easily eclipsing pre-pandemic levels by nearly $3 billion.
As the San Diego Tourism Authority prepares to hold its annual meeting later this week, it has released some new figures demonstrating the resurgence — and resilience — of the local visitor industry, which has seen travelers enthusiastically returning to hotels, restaurants and theme parks.
Between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023, they collectively spent a record $14.3 billion in San Diego County, according to the Tourism Authority. That’s up more than $3 billion compared to the previous fiscal year, and it exceeds spending during the 2019 fiscal year by $2.7 billion.
“San Diego has recovered better than many destinations,” said Tourism Authority Chief Operating Officer Kerri Kapich. “We’re very fortunate to have a location where we have all the outdoor beauty and amenities and a strong tourism infrastructure. But it’s getting more competitive. We’re really pleased by last year’s results but it will get harder as more destinations continue to recover.”
While San Diego accounts for just 10 percent of total statewide travel spending, it continues to be a star performer among its California rivals. It outranks all other metro areas in the state in multiple surveys on the top convention centers in the country, and it beats out Los Angeles and San Francisco when it comes to overseas arrivals at California’s ports of entry. San Diego boasts a 73 percent recovery rate in that category, as of September year-to-date, San Francisco follows at 71percent, and Los Angeles at 63 percent, according to Visit California.
“San Diego is doing very well as part of this recovery,” said Caroline Beteta, president and CEO of Visit California. “It’s definitely beating out San Francisco and Los Angeles in terms of overall recovery, and if you look at the group meetings recovery, San Diego leads all with 90 percent recovery.”
In addition to record visitor spending last year, nearly 17.3 million hotel room nights were booked, just shy of the 17.7 million rooms sold during the year before the pandemic arrived. At the same time, though, there were 1.4 million fewer overnight visitors compared to 2019, and yet, spending on hotels, restaurants, transportation and shopping soared.
That’s due in part to exponentially higher costs, but visitors are also staying here longer, Kapich explained. In 2019, the average length of stay was three nights, compared to four last year.
San Diego is also seeing gains in international visitors, although, like all of California, that is the one sector that has been much slower to rebound. That’s partly because of the much more sluggish return of international visitors from China. In one respect, San Diego is more fortunate than other gateway cities in California because its tourism economy is much less reliant on foreign visitation.
“We’ve never been a large international travel destination, but the countries we do rely on, including Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom, they’ve been the strongest recovery markets into the United States,” Kapich said. “Before the pandemic, China had become California’s No. 1 market. It was No. 2 for San Diego.”
Like San Diego, California is well on its way to a full tourism recovery post-pandemic. While international visitation will not return as quickly, overall travel spending has rebounded nicely, Beteta said.
“It’s been very exhilarating. In 2022, we were about 93 percent of 2019 peak levels,” she said. “Visitors in 2022 spent $134.4 billion, and we expect to meet or exceed that in 2023. We’re still looking for full recovery for international travel. China, our largest overseas market, is only 36 percent recovered for 2023. Even at that, it’s still our number one overseas market so that’s telling.”
Even with San Diego’s now booming tourism economy, the region can’t afford to rest on its laurels, Kapich cautions. That’s why the Tourism Authority expects to spend even more this coming year on marketing the county.
Last fiscal year, the agency spent $23 million on media and advertising. This year, that budget will grow to $30 million.
“We are trying to stay aggressive in the marketplace,” Kapich said, “and deliver as much demand as we can for tourism businesses.”
