Frederick County sees record-breaking visitor spending in 2022, study shows

Clara Niel, The Frederick News-Post, Md.
Updated ·2 min read

Oct. 30—Visitors to Frederick County broke records in 2022, spending $518 million, according to a study from Tourism Economics, a company that studies travel and economics.

This is the first time visitors to the county spent more than $500 million, according to a press release on the study from Visit Frederick, a nonprofit that markets the county for travel.

"It's been a steady rise," Dave Ziedelis, Visit Frederick's executive director, said on Monday. "We've sort of rocketed out of the pandemic in a lot of ways, really setting an all-time high in a variety of data points. Not only visitor spending, but hotel revenues, tourism taxes ...."

The last record for visitor spending was in 2021, when visitors spent $461.4 million, according to the study and the press release.

The study, titled "Economic Impact of Tourism in Maryland," was commissioned by the Maryland Office of Tourism, known as Visit Maryland.

Visit Maryland does not appear to have the 2022 study posted on its website, but it does have the 2021 study online.

The latest study shows that there were 1.9 million visitors to Frederick County in 2022. This is the highest number since 2019, when there was 2.1 million.

There was a 6% increase in total visitors between 2021 and 2022, according to the study. There were 1.8 million visitors in 2021.

A visitor is defined as someone who visits the county from outside a 50-mile radius or spends the night in the county, Ziedelis said.

The study used data from various resources to calculate the number of visitors to Frederick County and where they were spending their money.

For example, it pulled data from the Maryland Office of Tourism, which has state sales and lodging tax receipts; Smith Travel Research, which has lodging performance data; and survey data with spending and visitor totals for domestic visitors.

The county has seen a steady increase in visitor spending over the last 20 years, Ziedelis said, with exceptions during the Great Recession in 2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic.

After the pandemic, visitor spending boomed, he said.