State Reports Tourism Increase Of Nearly 4% | Reasons for visiting change as tourists seek bang for their buck
Despite, and perhaps because of, the rapidly souring U.S. economy, people visited Massachusetts 3.8 percent more frequently in 2008 than in 2007, according to the state Office of Travel and Tourism.
And more of those visitors were here to do business.
The office measured 19.4 million “person trips” to Massachusetts in 2008 compared to 18.7 million the prior year. And what those persons did during their trips to the Bay State changed as well.
Visiting friends and relatives, which accounted for 45.2 percent of trips into the state in 2007, accounted for 42.6 percent of trips last year.
The share of visitors claiming to be visiting the state on businesses increased from 8.3 percent in 2007 to 11 percent last year. Outdoor recreation also saw an increase, from 4.1 percent to 5.9 percent, as did the combined business/leisure, which saw its share of visitors increase from 4.1 percent to 6.4 percent.
The top 10 activities for visitors to the state more dramatically reflected 2008’s worsening economy. While activities like urban sightseeing and visits to state and national parks increased, the number of visitors coming to the state to shop fell by nearly 10 percent, as did the number of visitors who said they came for fine dining.
The Not-So-Mighty Dollar
Visits to museums held steady with 9.8 percent of person trips while visits to historical places and churches were down from 14.6 percent of visitors in 2007 to 11.5 percent in 2008.
The living history museum Old Sturbridge Village straddles the line between museum and historical place, and its attendance was up in 2008 by 8 percent, bucking the overall trend among such destinations.
“There are some real negatives. There are some destinations that are seeing some real downturns,” said Ann Lindblad, an OSV spokesman. But thanks to high gas prices, a location within an hour’s drive of some 8 million people and a currency exchange favorable to international visitors, OSV was able to avoid that downturn.
In all, international visits to OSV were up 9 percent last year, Lindblad said. The living museum said the majority of its international visitors are from Great Britain and Germany. The museum also saw increases in the number of visitors from New England, with the number of visitors from inside the state increasing by 13 percent and the number of visitors from Vermont increasing by 23 percent.
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