SALT LAKE CITY — Utah’s tourism industry generated nearly $12 billion in visitor spending last year, and there are no signs that it’s slowing down anytime soon, which is creating potentially new opportunities to experience the state, tourism experts say.
Preliminary 2022 data shows that last year’s spending eclipsed the previous record of $11.7 billion set in 2019, though record inflation is partly responsible for that, according to updated data released by the University of Utah Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute Wednesday morning. This supported over 150,000 statewide jobs and generated an estimated $2.12 billion in tax revenue.
The institute is still crunching last year’s numbers before a final report is released.
While visitation to Utah’s national and state parks dropped closer to pre-pandemic levels in 2022, the state’s ski resorts blossomed as a result of an early and long ski season and record snowfall in Utah’s mountains. At least 12 of the state’s 15 resorts broke visitation records, Ski Utah officials reported in June.
“This great snowfall definitely played into it, the record visitor spending,” said Jennifer Leaver, a senior tourism analyst at the Gardner Policy Institute who presented the data Wednesday.
International travel, which was virtually wiped out by the global pandemic, remained behind 2019 levels in 2022. This typically accounts for as much as a tenth of direct visitor spending. However, Leaver said she believes it will be close to or back to 2019 levels as early as this year.
The new data left Utah’s tourism leaders feeling confident after the industry was decimated by the COVID-19 pandemic three years ago.
How tourism aids urban and rural Utah
Utah’s urban core continues to generate the majority of visitor spending. Davis, Salt Lake, Utah and Weber counties, combined, accounted for nearly 57% of the money generated last year, according to the institute.
This is perhaps most evident by the successes in downtown Salt Lake City, which the University…
