Indianapolis Delivers Back-to-Back Record Tourism Years

February 1, 2016

Visit Indy announced at its annual meeting January 28 that it produced record-setting convention sales results in 2015, topping its previous record year of 2014. The organization also reported a new record for summer weekend leisure hotel room nights.

In 2015, Visit Indy booked 904,717 convention hotel room nights into the future — conventions, trade shows, meetings and events that will meet up to a decade later — 117 percent of its sales target. The groups that chose Indy will generate an estimated $994 million in future economic impact for central Indiana. Visit Indy’s previous record was in 2014, when the non-profit destination marketing organization (DMO) booked 880,552 room-nights. DMOs such as Visit Indy use contracted hotel room nights as a key benchmarking metric to measure the health of their tourism economies.

“Though we faced some adversity in 2015, our entire tourism community galvanized, helping produce a record-setting year for Indianapolis, central Indiana and Visit Indy,” said Leonard Hoops, president and CEO of Visit Indy.

Hoops noted that Visit Indy saw its year-over-year convention bookings drop by 43 percent in the second quarter of 2015 — the immediate aftermath of Indiana’s religious freedom law controversy — but added that convention sales were actually up year-over-year by 31 percent after July 1. The organization’s second-half sales results, in addition to a strong first quarter, propelled it to a new record.

“It took a few months for our team to methodically reach out to meeting decision-makers and communicate that Indianapolis already had its own long-standing human rights ordinance with full LGBT protections, and that Indiana’s religious freedom law had been amended and could not be used for discrimination,” said Hoops. “We’re optimistic that groups that did not choose us during the second quarter of last year will reconsider us in the future especially when they compare Indy’s comprehensive HRO to other major cities.”

Among the key wins in 2015 was the National FFA’s commitment to hold its Convention & Expo in Indy from 2019 through 2024. The group had previously committed to Indy for 2016 to 2018. The six-year extension will generate $216 million in economic impact.

Visit Indy also inked a deal with the American Chemical Society, which will meet in Indy in 2023, generating $18.1 million in economic impact. In addition, the American Association of Nurse Practitioners’ National Conference booked Indy, to generate $12.3 million in economic impact when they meet in 2019. And the International Dairy-Deli-Bakery Association’s Seminar & Expo will generate $11.4 million in 2020.

Another indication that 2015 was a strong year for Indy tourism was Web traffic to Visit Indy’s main marketing portal, VisitIndy.com. In 2015, the site’s traffic tallied 2.88 million user sessions, well up from the previous record of 2.41 million in 2014. Higher traffic on destination web sites is typically reflective of greater numbers of people planning trips to a destination.

The mission of Visit Indy is to increase Indianapolis economic growth by strategically selling the destination to conventions, meetings, events, and leisure travelers. According to Rockport Analytics, 27.4 million visitors generate $4.5 billion in total economic impact annually and support 75,000 full-time equivalent jobs in Central Indiana. For more information, www.VisitIndy.com.

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