Arizona and metro Phoenix is a huge tourist destination. In 2021, we had over 40 million visitors to the state and they spent about 23 billion dollars.
I wonder how these data are collected. If credit cards, wonder if they have a way to disregard college students or people who moved here recently, but still have an out of state home as their card's address. Would have small impact on number of visitors but possibly large impact on dollars spent (visit for 5 days vs "visit" for 9 months)
I think they look at hotel stays, flights and then survey data for people driving in. Also survey data for how much people spent and then extrapolate that out to get a rough number for visitors.
Also sales tax is another way to look at it since those hotels/resorts and even vacation rentals have to report that.
My guess is they are able to come up with a way to determine what is the average % of people doing staycations to back those numbers out.
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u/howtodragyourtrainin Sep 26 '22
Wow, now I know. I've lived here my entire life, it's quite difficult to think of the valley as a tourist destination. :)