Chicago tourism

Chicago tourism

CHICAGO

Chicago officials say for the first time, the city had more than 50 million visitors in 2014.

City officials made the announcement last week, saying Chicago hosted about 50.2 million visitors last year. That’s a 3.5 percent increase over 2013.

Statistics show tourism is responsible for $14.7 billion in visitor spending in Chicago and $871 million in tax revenue. The numbers come after Mayor Rahm Emanuel set a goal of having Chicago attract 55 million visitors annually by 2020.

City officials say domestic travel accounted for most of the travel increases. But they say international visitors continue to increase, too. Chicago had about 48.6 million international visitors last year, 3.6 percent above 2013 numbers.

Busiest airport

ATLANTA

Atlanta city officials say the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport has again been named the world’s busiest airport in terms of passenger traffic.

Mayor Kasim Reed said last week that about 96.1 million travelers passed through the airport in 2014, an increase of more than 1.7 million from the year before.

Reed says the city’s airport has been the world’s busiest for the past 17 years and contributes roughly $34 billion to that region’s economy.

Geography quiz

Q. Name the four states that border Lake Erie.

A. Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. On the north, it’s bordered by Ontario, Canada.

Ferris wheel in NYC

NEW YORK

Developers are gearing up to break ground on a giant Ferris wheel on Staten Island.

The Staten Island Advance reported recently that work is scheduled to begin this month, with a formal groundbreaking ceremony to take place March 10.

Developer Rich Marin tells the newspaper the ceremony will celebrate work on the 625-foot-tall wheel, an open-air designer outlet mall and a hotel. Altogether, it’s about a $500 million project.

The Ferris wheel will offer a view of the Statue of Liberty, New York Harbor and the Manhattan skyline.

Las Vegas visitors

LAS VEGAS

A record 41.1 million visitors descended on Las Vegas last year.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority confirmed recently what it already had been anticipating: 41.1 million visitors, up 3.7 percent from 39.7 million in 2013, stayed overnight at the destination in 2014. The total visitor volume is the most the destination has ever seen in one year.

Of those, 5.2 million visitors attended one or more of the 22,103 conventions there last year. Both figures are up compared with the previous year.

The agency says 3.1 million visitors came to Sin City in December, up 5.5 percent.

Hawaii tourism

HONOLULU

The Hawaii Tourism Authority says a record 8.28 million travelers came to the islands last year, up more than 1 percent from the previous year.

The agency said recently visitors spent a record $14.75 billion while in Hawaii.

More travelers came from North America and smaller international markets such as China and Australia.

But the tourism authority says fewer visitors came from Japan, which is the state’s biggest source of overseas travelers. The agency attributed this to an unstable economy in Japan and a weakening yen, which makes vacationing abroad more expensive for Japanese travelers.

Combined dispatches