Tomorrow’s Tourist Matters

SOME MAY REGARD THE TOURISTS WHO SWARM THE WASHington region year-round with mild annoyance (Stand right! Walk left!), others with mild amusement (Oh, those silly-looking Segway tours!). But what all those visitors represent is a critical and rapidly expanding revenue stream for the local economy.

In 2016, 22 million domestic and international visitors came to this region, spending $7.31 billion while they were here. Both of those numbers are all-time records. Visitor revenues have increased by $600 million since 2013. Those revenues should continue to climb because the visitor head count to the Washington region is expected to top 25 million by 2020.

“Tourism is one of the parts of economic development that people don’t think is economic development, because tourism is fun,” says Elliott Ferguson, president and CEO of Destination DC, a private, non-profit corporation that is the official marketing organization for the Washington area. “But quite frankly, it affects a lot of people in the Washington region.”

That $7.31 billion in revenue, for instance, generates $700 million in local taxes and directly supports nearly 75,000 jobs. In total, jobs tied directly to travel and tourism account for $4 billion in annual area wages. “If this industry were to go away,” Ferguson says, “the city of Washington alone would have to spend $2,500 per resident to make up for the difference in taxes generated by visitors.”

The tourism industry here isn’t going away, but it does face some headwinds. International travel, for instance, has been affected by global political upheaval, terrorist incidents in the United States and Europe, and immigration policy changes. All of those things have led foreign tourists to rethink travel to the Washington area.

That poses a potential financial problem. International arrivals had been on a big incline — up 6.4 percent between 2015 and 2016 — and international visitors have made an outsize contribution to overall visitor revenues. Even though only 9 percent of all visitors to the Washington region came from overseas in 2016, they accounted for 28 percent of the total $7.31 billion in visitor spending in the area.

Still, even if foreign visitors don’t come to the area in the same numbers over the next couple of years, convention and business visitors could make up for the difference in the near term. In 2017 alone, 21 major conventions were held in the area. Those events will have a $361 million economic impact — a record high. Cvent, an event-management company, now ranks Washington as the No. 6 city for business meetings.

“We’re not a destination that just relies on tourism and the leisure market,” Ferguson says. “That may be surprising to a lot of people. But we do very well with the convention market.”

The Greater Washington area also has a few other good things going for it these days when it comes to drawing more visitors. There’s the recent expansion of National Harbor; the remade Wharf in the District, which will have three new hotels, three live music venues, four public piers and 20 restaurants, as well as a new water taxi; and the upcoming MLB All-Star Week, which will take place in the Washington area from July 13-17, 2018. There is also one new major museum opening here in 2018: The National Law Enforcement Museum. It will be joined by the reopening of the International Spy Museum, which is moving in fall 2018 to a vastly expanded new site close to the Wharf. In early 2019, the venerable Kennedy Center will near completion of its own massive expansion project. Conservative projections show those new museums, joined by the Museum of the Bible, which opened in 2017, will

LODGING

$ 2.51 BILLION

FOOD & BEVERAGE

$ 2.10 BILLION

ENTERTAINMENT

$1.21 BILLION

SHOPPING

$ 891 MILLION

TRANSPORTATION

$ 604 MILLION

Source: IHS Markit

International Visitors to Washington D.C.

RANKED BY COUNTRY (2016)

China 304K

UK 199K

Germany 145K

France 103K

India 100K

South Korea 93K

Australia 81K

Italy 62K

Spain 62K

Japan 58K

Source: Destination DC

Waterfront Property

draw 2.5 million more museum visitors to Washington.

“You should care about museums,” says Tamara Christian, president and chief operating officer of the International Spy Museum. “Museums stimulate learning. They change lives. Museums are big business. This matters, and it especially matters in Washington, because museums are vital to the tourism market.”

Performances are vital, too. And Greater Washington is seeing more of those than ever before. Sales at Wolf Trap, the only U.S. National Park dedicated to the performing arts, are up substantially in the past couple years, even as two major new performance venues — the MGM National Harbor and the Anthem at the Wharf — come online. “You’d think this is a very saturated market,” says Arvind Manocha, president and CEO of the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts. “The amount of concert opportunities here is — outside of New York and Los Angeles — unparalleled. But we are still doing well and we are clearly attracting new audiences.”

The Opportunity Spurred on by new museums and other attractions, the area’s upward tourist trend is likely to continue, providing businesses here a chance to capitalize on the capital city’s increasing appeal to visitors.

Future Forward

Added Attractions

New Attraction

A completely remade International Spy Museum

Bigger, better: When it moves from the 19th-century, neoclassical building in Penn Quarter that it has occupied since 2002 to a newly built, modernist facility in L’Enfant Plaza, the International Spy Museum will gain new educational programming spaces, a theater, and event spaces that have views of the Capitol, the Washington Monument, and the nearby, newly redeveloped waterfront. That’s all contained in 450,000 square feet of space.

Secret streetscapes: The new exhibits promise to be more interactive, more immersive, and offer more informational takeaways. One such new attraction is a recreation of a street in Cold War East Berlin. Visitors will enter the street either through Checkpoint Charlie or an underground tunnel and will have to walk past the Ministry for State Security, among other things. Boosting the neighborhood: A free, fourstop shuttle bus will connect the remade Spy Museum to the L’Enfant Metro stop, the Hirshhorn Museum, and the Wharf. “We think this will drive more people to L’Enfant Plaza,” says Christian, the Spy Museum’s COO.

New Attraction

The National Law Enforcement Museum

A living memorial: When it opens in fall 2018, this new, 57,000-square-foot space in Judiciary Square will occupy three levels, mostly underground. The project from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund is located adjacent to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial. The museum traces the history of law enforcement from the Old West to Prohibition to the War on Terror up to today, telling real stories of real officers working in their communities. An interactive ride along: The museum’s artifact collection includes Elliott Ness’ original credentials, costumes from the movie Robocop, the 1990 Chevrolet Caprice used by the Beltway Snipers, a cell block from the Lorton Corrections Complex, and immersive exhibits where users will have to make split-second decisions in an armed confrontation with hostage takers or study the forensic clues in crime investigations. There is also a café on site. Yes, it serves doughnuts. A museum for this moment: “Twenty years ago when we first had the idea of building a national law enforcement museum, we had no idea about the amount of attention that’s being focused on the law enforcement profession today,” says Craig Floyd, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund’s president and chief executive. “But the public’s attention is now focused on law enforcement, some of it negative, some of it not. We think this museum, through its story and through the programming we’ll have, can help bring the public together with law enforcement and strengthen that bond between public and police.”

New Attraction

A vastly expanded John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts

Flexible and fun: The Kennedy Center is undergoing the largest expansion project since its opening in 1971 — a $180 million project, all privately funded, that is set to be completed in the spring of 2019. It will add three new buildings to the center’s complex along the Potomac River. The pavilions will be informal, flexible spaces filled with natural light. The three new buildings could house classes, exhibitions, performances, or parties and other events — just depending on the day. Outdoor, elevated walkways will connect the buildings and join the site to the adjacent riverfront. Connecting to the community: Deborah Rutter, president of the Kennedy Center, says the idea behind the project is to add new, more intimate spaces to a facility that already plays host to 2,000 performances and 2 million visitors per year. “Today’s audiences want to be more engaged and participatory,” Rutter says. “They want to engage with the artists and maybe make art themselves. These spaces can allow that. And that will allow us to have a more active, dynamic relationship with the community.”