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Where do you think these foreign people that go to Vail or Aspen arrive by plane?
They layover in massive layover airports like Dallas or Atlanta or Chicago, because those two airports have direct air access to Aspen and one up Denver on foreign airlines and services. It's not even remotely close.
That's where.
I've been to Aspen and I never had to go through Denver for it at all, it's far from Denver. Took a flight and transferred there from Dallas, which is the gateway along with Chicago or Atlanta most international tourists do that out of.
With Vail it's even easier since it's only a major draw in winter you have even larger transfer options like Toronto, New York, along with Dallas, Atlanta, and Chicago.
Like 80% of the foreign (not Canadian) tourists who go skiing in the USA, go to Colorado!
Two things:
1) Where did you get that figure?
2) Where do you get the idea that there is a massive number of foreign people coming to Colorado to ski?
Based on the number of Denver bound passengers from the airlines, Denver is on the same level as roughly Minneapolis or Detroit in terms of international passenger attraction. The difference is that Denver's passengers are more leisure oriented.
What things can Chicago do to attract a larger number of visitors? Some things that come to mind is further continuation of making downtown more mixed use and with more afterhours options as downtown is where most visitors are likely to spend most of their time. Another is to go through with the megaprojects that made Chicago iconic, so building things such as the Chicago spire would help. Another is to make the waterfronts even more attractive such as giving Lake Shore Drive a diet so that it's even more permeable for pedestrians to get to the lakefront and to continue sprucing up all along the riverfront. A seasonal beach scene like a freshwater Rio with towering skyscrapers in sight would be amazing.
Not really "sorry", Chicago has always been around #9 or #10 below the other cities on the list. Chicago doesn't get the attention like the coastal cities for international tourists - get a ton of domestic though. The city still gets millions of foriegn visitors, but in the form of business/convention travel in which case I believe it's right near the top below NYC. Most people will fit in national parks and San Fran/LA out west, or do Florida and northeast cities. Chicago's just too out of the way and certainly overlooked by overseas visitors. People will hit up LA/Hollywood and NYC - so why go to Chicago?
It's actually record numbers for Chicago in 2012, been going up for years now as the city decided to actually start advertising for tourists much more, and opened offices for the first time overseas.
2012 saw 3.2% more international tourists than 2011. For total visitors its gone from 42.4M in 2010 to 45.0M in 2011 to 46.2M last year. Latest I could find is the city gets just under 20M business travelers a year.
Hotel revenue set a record at $857M last year and is on target for another record this year. I'm amazed at how many downtown hotels they've opened the past 7 or so years and the construction just keeps coming. Not sure where all the new people are coming from staying over, although I'm sure business travel is a lot of it and the record tourists.
This. Americans can be quite unaware of what non-Americans want to visit. Chicago should be grateful it even gets 1 million, really. Though not fair many non-Americans will see it as just a smaller NYC. People dream of going to NYC or LA as kids, few dream of going to Chicago. That's personally the case for me, but being interested in the US I'd like to see Chicago too (early history of skyscrapers, prohibition/gangster era and electric blues are the biggest draws for me). I've done cross-country, so I've been to places like Lubbock, Texas lol.
But yeah, Orlando should be obvious...the theme parks. Many Europeans solely go to Orlando for Disney, Universal Studios.etc, they're such huge attractions in themselves. Especially considering a lot are families with kids.
Like 80% of the foreign (not Canadian) tourists who go skiing in the USA, go to Colorado!
You got stats on that? The US has so many other places to ski, some as good or better than Colorado. California, Utah, Oregon, Washington, even Arizona and New Mexico, Wyoming, New England, New York are some of the states which boast skiing. You never heard of Lake Tahoe, Park City, Taos?
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