Chicago Tourism Metrics, January 2016

Making Chicago a premier destination for tourism and entertainment is a major part of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Plan for Economic Growth & Jobs that WBC is implementing to drive growth in Chicago. Choose Chicago, the official destination marketing organization for Chicago, also plays an integral role in economic growth by attracting business and leisure visitors to the city.

The following points summarize recent hotel and air passenger trends for Chicago:

• Chicago’s overall hotel occupancy rate was 45.1% in January down from 51.0% a year ago.
• The overall average daily rate (ADR) was $126.96 in January, down from $139.29 in January 2015.
• The Chicago Central Business District has 115 hotel properties comprising 39,105 rooms. Recently opened hotels include the Chicago Athletic Association Hotel (241 rooms), Hyatt Place Chicago/Downtown The Loop (217 rooms), and the Loews Chicago Hotel (52 rooms).
• More than 3,300 new rooms are expected to open in the next two years, including the Chinatown Hotel (101 rooms, 2016), Nobu Hotel (93 rooms, 2016), and Ace Hotel (150 rooms, 2016).
• O’Hare – the world’s busiest airport in terms of flight operations – and Midway International airports served a combined 7.83 million air passengers in December 2015, a 5.2% increase over last December

Average daily rate and occupancy trends are illustrated in the following charts:

Source: Choose Chicago; Chicago Department of Aviation. For more information on Chicago’s tourism landscape, please refer to the Choose Chicago website and 2014 Annual Report.

Chaired by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, World Business Chicago is the public-private partnership leading the Plan for Economic Growth and Jobs in order to drive business development, cultivate talent, and put Chicago at the forefront of the global economy.

WBC’s “Economic Briefs” track indicators from month to month to gauge the strength of several aspects of Chicago’s economy, including unemployment, population, venture capital, job openings and new hires, home sales, tourism, etc. This data provides a clear analytic framework for specific Plan strategies and initiatives. For a summary of these and other economic indicators, refer to WBC’s monthly Chicago By The Numbers.