Travel Industry Fun Facts … Dec 2007

Did You Know - that travel and tourism is a $1.6 trillion industry in the United States? If one dollar bill
equaled a second of time, then $1.6 trillion would equal almost 51,000 years.

Did You Know - that travel and tourism generates $110 billion in tax revenue for local, state and
federal governments? If you place 110 billion one dollar bills end-to-end, they would circle the world 
419 times.

Did You Know - that each U.S. household would pay $995 more in taxes without the tax revenue generated by the travel and tourism industry? $995 will buy about five weeks of groceries for a family of four, will fill the average car with gas 17 times, or will even pay the average cost of a ticket to a Michigan vs. Ohio State football game.

Did You Know - that the travel and tourism industry is one of the country's largest employers with 7.5 million direct travel-generated jobs? You could fill the Louisiana Superdome a hundred times over with people directly employed in the industry.

Did You Know - that direct travel-generated payroll totals $178 billion and that 1 out of every 8 U.S. non-farm jobs is created directly, indirectly or is induced by travel and tourism?

Did You Know - that the travel and tourism industry is one of America's largest service exports? International travelers spent more on their visits to the United States than U.S. residents spent while traveling abroad, creating a trade surplus of $8.3 billion for the U.S. in 2006.

Did You Know - that dining is the most popular domestic trip activity and is included in 31% of all domestic trips? Shopping is the No. 1 leisure/recreational activity for overseas visitors.

Did You Know – that approximately 2.8 million hotel room nights are sold every day in the United States? That is enough hotel rooms to lodge every person living in Dallas, Detroit, Denver and Orlando combined.

Did You Know - that 56.2 million people visited a casino in 2006? That's more than a quarter of the total U.S. population over the age of 21.

Did You Know - that spending by resident and international travelers in the U.S. averaged $2 billion a day, $84.5 million an hour, $1.4 million a minute, and $23,500 a second?

Did You Know - that just a 1 percent increase in U.S. worldwide market share would equate to 8.4 million more visitors, $14 billion more in expenditures, 152,000 new jobs, $3.6 billion more in payroll, and $2.2 billion more in federal, state and local tax revenue?