Toronto tourism is in great shape! And that is fabulous news for the 100,000 people who work in the industry. In 2007:

Toronto hosted over 10.6 million overnight visitors

Visitors to Toronto spent over 4.5 billion dollars on hotels, restaurants, attractions, shopping, meeting facilities, performing arts, and transportation

Hotel occupancy rose to 68.3%

Toronto is now 13th in hotel occupancy (up from 16th) among the top 30 U.S. and Canadian cities, and was the 7th fastest growing destination in hotel occupancy

Toronto’s meeting and convention business continued to grow

Toronto’s largest overseas market is the U.K., which grew by 2% in 2007 to approximately 280,000 visitors

Mexico and China were the fastest growing international markets at approximately 15% growth each

Tourism Toronto’s active sales programs in the U.K., Mexico, and China are clearly delivering results. Internationally we are also trying to attract tourists from Germany, South Korea, and Japan. Realizing the importance of attractive high value travelers to the city, Toronto recently opened its first overseas sales office in London, U.K. as the hub for its international initiatives. This will complement the offices in Washington, D.C. and Chicago in the U.S., as well as the office in our nation’s capital, Ottawa.

Toronto’s meeting and convention business is experiencing unprecedented growth with 470,000 future room nights already booked – 46 future meetings with more than 1,000 room nights each – which is estimated to produce more than 250 million dollars in visitor spending.

These statistics are very impressive given that the analysts were predicting that the strong Canadian dollar and the new passport regulations would have dire effects on our tourism industry. The world is gradually finding what we all already know – that Toronto is a fabulous world class city!