The signs are encouraging. A significant number of American travelers seem to be spending more vacation dollars on cultural and historic attractions.
It was gratifying, for example, to see that 965,000 people came to the Art Institute of Chicago for the Claude Monet retrospective two years ago. Of that number, 694,800 came from outside the Chicago metropolitan area–including 125,450 foreign travelers. An economic study made after that exhibition showed that non-Illinois visitors spent $31 million on hotel rooms, $22 million on meals and $18 million on transportation. That’s big business for Chicago.
For “Renoir’s Portraits: Impressions of an Age,” from Oct. 21 to Jan. 4, the Art Institute is projecting 600,000 visitors. So far some 90,000 tickets have been sold. “We’ll probably get fewer visitors from out of the city–125,000 to 150,000,” said John Foley Hindman, an Art Institute spokesman. The paintings, he noted, are being shown elsewhere in North America–the National Gallery of Art in Ottawa, Ontario, and the Kimbell Art Museum in Ft. Worth. The much larger Monet show appeared only in Chicago.
The fact that tens of thousand of people travel to Chicago and elsewhere to see superlative art–not to mention theater, opera, festivals and historic sites–sends a clear message: Travelers enjoy and are willing to pay for quality experiences.
In April, Mayor Richard M. Daley launched a $6 million “Cultural Chicago” marketing campaign to position the city as a premier cultural destination. The Chicago Office of Tourism and the Illinois Bureau of Tourism are collaborating to promote not only the city’s many institutions but also summer tours of eight culturally rich neighborhoods.
Important tourism cities such as San Francisco, New York, San Diego, Los Angeles, Portland (Oregon) and New Orleans are pushing their cultural/historic treasures.
St. Louis and Indianapolis are priming their cultural pumps as well. St. Louis launched the program “America’s Music Corridor,” along with the Mississippi River cities of Memphis and New Orleans. For jazz, blues, ragtime and rock ‘n’ roll fans, the cities offer suggested itineraries and music events calendars. St. Louis also plans to cooperatively market its attractions in Forest Park–the St. Louis Science Center, St. Louis Art Museum and the St. Louis Zoological Park, plus the Missouri Botanical Garden outside the park.
In Indianapolis, Mayor Stephen Goldsmith and the Arts Council of Indianapolis are forging linkages among the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Children’s Museum and the city’s performing arts to spur downtown growth, says Sandy Guettler, a Chicago-based cultural tourism consultant.
The Portland Oregon Visitors Association is looking for someone to oversee cultural tourism and expand its cultural/historic efforts following the successful “Imperial Tombs of China” exhibition.
Cities and towns across the country are trying to spruce up and market their cultural and historic sites. Communities are learning that many travelers want more than a beach or amusement-park vacation, so they look for broader-based activities with educational merit.
Appropriately, cultural and historic tourism took center stage this month when the Washington, D.C.-based Travel Industry Association of America, a broad-based trade group, released a 100-page, first-ever report–“Profile of Travelers Who Participate in Historic and Cultural Activities.”
“Twenty-seven percent of all U.S. adults–that’s 53.6 million persons–reported taking at least one trip in the previous year that included a visit to a historic place or museum as a trip activity,” said William S. Norman, TIA’s president and CEO, during a recent news conference. “Similarly, 17 percent of all U.S. adults–some 33 million persons–reported taking a trip in the previous year which included a visit to a cultural event or festival as a trip activity.”
Combined, one-third of all U.S. adults–65.9 million persons–included either cultural or historic events on a trip, Norman noted.
The yearlong study was based, according to Norman, on analysis of TIA’s National Travel Survey and TravelScope, the latter providing detailed trip and demographic characteristics culled from 240,000 households–20,000 households a month.
Interest in attending a cultural event or festival prompted travel for 12.3 million of the 33 million cultural travelers (37 percent), the study said.
The desire to visit a historic place or museum spurred travel for 10 million of the 53.6 million historical travelers (19 percent).
Cultural and historical travelers differ in significant ways from the total U.S. traveling public, Norman said, citing these findings:
– They spend on average more than total U.S. travelers, $615 per trip compared with $425.
– They stay at destinations longer, 4.7 nights compared with 3.3 nights.
– They are slightly older on average, 48 compared with 46.
– They have a slightly higher mean household income, $43,133 compared with $41,455.
– And they are slightly more likely to have completed college (54 percent versus 52 percent) or post-graduate education (21 percent versus 18 percent).
And what’s a study without a popularity contest? What states attract most of these travelers? The Top 10: California, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Illinois and, in a tie for 10th, Georgia and Ohio.
“More surprising to us,” Norman said, “was the top 10 states in terms of percentage of their total visitors who included at least one historic or cultural activity on their trip: Washington, D.C., 61 percent; Hawaii, 53 percent; Alaska, 48 percent; South Dakota, 34 percent; New York, Vermont and New Mexico, 33 percent; Virginia and Rhode Island, 32 percent; and a tie between Maryland and Massachusetts, 31 percent.
For those of you who love historic and cultural sites, feel good. You’re in the forefront of a movement.
