Community Impact
Tourism fuels the local economy, employs residents, generates revenue, provides human services housing resources and supports local arts programs. Keep reading to learn about the impact Experience Columbus has on the community and to learn about what we do as the destination marketing organization for the Columbus region, dedicated to growing visitor spending and enhancing the visitor experience.
FUELS THE ECONOMY
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Greater Columbus welcomes 42.7 million visitors each year. Those visitors provide $6.6 billion in direct spend to local businesses.
EMPLOYS RESIDENTS
- Tourism supports 75,000 jobs in Franklin County. That's one out of every 15 jobs.
GENERATES REVENUE
- The local tourism industry generates revenue for vital city and county needs, and local, state and federal tax revenue generated by visitors to Franklin County is estimated to be $1.24 billion.
- These funds go to local human services, economic development and the arts.
- $147 million in city tax revenue is generated by the tourism industry, saving each Franklin County household $1,387* per year.
CREATES RETURN ON INVESTMENT
- Bed tax collections bring in $33.4 million and benefit a range of community organizations, including Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies and:
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- The top five industry sectors that benefit from visitor spending:
What We Do
We are a destination marketing organization, sometimes referred to as a convention and visitor bureau. We hire people from a variety of backgrounds: hospitality, the arts, tour operations, communications, marketing, finance, account management and customer service, just to name a few.
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* The methodology used to calculate this number has changed to establish a new benchmark.