Columbus outshines major cities in visitors, but experts urge caution in interpreting numbers

Columbus welcomed more visitors in 2023 than such tourist destinations as Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Miami.

That is according to data from Experience Columbus, the city's tourism marketing agency.

Ohio's capital city welcomed 51.2 million visitors, according to the organization's data. That would mean Columbus saw more visitors than a typical year for Los Angeles' 49.1 million, Las Vegas' 40.8 million and Miami's 27.2 million, according to their respective tourism bureaus.

But those numbers should be looked at with a healthy bit of skepticism, said Dan McCole, an industry expert and an associate professor of tourism with Michigan State University and MSU Extension.

“These different consulting companies all have different methodologies in which they land at final numbers, which can ultimately skew the results when attempting to compare quantities across different cities,” McCole said.

At its annual TourismUS meeting in May, Experience Columbus unveiled its latest report, proudly announcing that more than 50 million visitors came to the city in 2023. This milestone was highlighted on the first slide of the presentation.

Since 2012, Experience Columbus has engaged Longwoods International, a tourism consulting company, to compile its annual visitor statistics.

“I fully support the data we have; it comes from a trusted source and has been historically accurate.” Experience Columbus President and CEO Brian Ross said in an interview with The Dispatch after the May event.

Experience Columbus pays Longwoods $29,500 a year for this service. Longwoods, headquartered in Columbus, has more than 175 clients and works with well over 100 destinations, including cities, states, regions and occasionally countries​​.

Longwoods uses the same methodology of reporting this data with all its clients, President and CEO Amir Eylon said.

"We're extremely confident in our estimation efforts and that 51.2 million figure," Eylon said. "We use a sophisticated and consistent modeling approach for all our clients that pulls from a substantial database."

Longwoods uses a method that involves analyzing responses from a large pool of surveys that covers about 250,000 trips Americans took. The survey asks travelers various questions about their experiences.

For Columbus, about 1,600 of these survey responses were specifically about trips to the city. Those 1,600 responses were then used to estimate that Columbus had 51.2 million visitors in 2023, based on a few factors including overnight and day trips.

Overnight trips involve staying away from home for at least one night, while day trips are defined as trips that do not include an overnight stay and require traveling at least 50 miles from home to Columbus.

Rather than just reporting unique visitors, Longwoods presents "person trips," which counts all individuals involved in the trips. This metric can include multiple trips made by the same people in a year.

For example, if someone comes to Columbus for a concert in February and then for a convention in August, they're counted twice.

While that may help explain Columbus' 51.2 million visitor figure, McCole said it may not make much sense to compare such a number to other cities.

"Such aggregated statistics, while helpful for broad evaluations, can mislead stakeholders about the true economic impact of tourism on the local economy, especially when compared nationally when different methodologies are being implemented," he said.

McCole likened the practice of comparing visitor numbers to comparing apples to oranges, describing the data inconsistencies across different destinations.

Experience Columbus uses visitor statistics predominantly for internal purposes to understand how a growth in tourism has contributed to the local economy, Ross said.

“We’re not really concerned about how we stack up with other destinations across the country, but more so on the year over year changes,” Ross said.

While the numbers may mostly be used internally as Ross said, Experience Columbus prominently promotes them on the organization's website and in other public materials.

"Many cities looking to establish themselves as key destinations also use this tourism data as marketing material," said Alexander Quinn, senior director of research, Northern California at Jones Lang LaSalle, a global real estate service company.

Quinn also pointed out that due to the differing statistical methodologies used across destinations, it becomes extremely challenging to compare tourism numbers on a standardized basis between cities.

Jewolf@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus outdraws LA and Vegas? A dive into surprising tourism figures