Why is Boston not mentioned more when people talk about great cities in the US (Everett: amusement parks, casinos)

[timberline742]

Texas is a city?

[Boston Shudra]

Originally Posted by Yankeemama

Seattle is a beautiful city and the surrounding areas have a lot to offer tourists. Boston is never going to be top U.S. tourist attraction

And yet Boston gets many more tourists than Seattle....(*wierd*)

Originally Posted by garyseckendorfusa

Boston is an old city which is not so much developed as another cities developed such as New york, Texas etc.

Bwahaha!

[Cliff Clavin]

Originally Posted by iAMtheVVALRUS

And yet Boston gets many more tourists than Seattle....(*wierd*)

People really should do a little fact checking before posting.

Faneuil Hall gets more visitors per year than both Disney Land and Disney World.

America's Most Popular Tourist Attractions

[table12]

I work in tourism and am a big fan of Boston (go Sox!), but that particular Yahoo article is very deceiving. The first 4 locations (Times Square, Vegas Strip, National Mall and Faneuil Hall) are all free to visit. The 5th location, Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom park, is gated and costs (arguably quite a bit) to actually get into to.

Orlando is actually the most visited city in the USA:

List: America's Most-Visited Cities - Forbes

And was the first US city to pass 50 million visitors in a year:

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...tor-mark/?_r=0

Boston has much more going for it than Orlando, but comparing Orlando's tourist business to Boston's is a bad road to go down if you're trying to prove that Boston has some kind of break-neck tourism business going on. It's the one thing Orlando does unquestionably outpace Boston at. An easy way to digest this is to notice that neither BOS nor MCO are major hub airports, they're usually endpoints so the #'s are fairly accurate (not like Atlanta being the "most popular" city despite its aiport being the busiest in the US). MCO is the 13th busiest in the US while BOS is the 19th (List of the busiest airports in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) -- that pretty much explains it.

Just thought I'd toss my hat in the ring here because it's the one area where I do know my stuff. The majority of Boston's tourism is derived from people visiting family in the area, doing a local day-trip from surrounding counties or neighboring states, and of course some convention tourism. But the number of people who hop on a plane to "go on vacation" in Boston is not a high number, and comparing it to the Disney parks is ludicrous -- it's completely apples and oranges.

Boston has a tremendously diversified economy with tourism a nice, small slice of the pie. Orlando has an almost unfathomable amount of tourism, and their economy revolves almost solely around it, and O-Town is basically a gigantic one-trick pony. But it's a pony they're arguably better at than any other city right now and it always pains me to see people from Boston try to stack it up as some kind of massive tourism hub when the city has so many other things it does truly slay at.

[timberline742]

Yeah, I don't think people really believe Boston is more popular for tourists than Orlando, or DC, or NY... but Seattle?

[AtkinsonDan]

Originally Posted by timberline742

Yeah, I don't think people really believe Boston is more popular for tourists than Orlando, or DC, or NY... but Seattle?

Well Seattle has the Space Needle and access to the Sierra/Cascade mountain range. I am sure there is much more but I don't have the time to research. Xmas guests are coming.

[table12]

Originally Posted by timberline742

Yeah, I don't think people really believe Boston is more popular for tourists than Orlando, or DC, or NY... but Seattle?

I was just responding to Cliff's point about Faneuil Hall having more visitors than Disney World, which is deeply inaccurate. It does (sort of?) have more visitors than the Magic Kingdom park within Disney World. But they're not paid admission, which makes it borderline impossible to determine who really are "tourists" at Faneuil Hall, whereas at the Magic Kingdom it's very clear-cut. And when Orlando broke through the 50 million tourists in a year milestone in 2010, you have to assume the vast majority of those are going to Walt Disney World anyway, just not all to the Magic Kingdom itself.

"Disney World" in aggregate definitely gets more visitors than Faneuil Hall (don't forget that Disney World's property is twice the size of Manhattan and is far and away the most visited resort in the world), but the Magic Kingdom itself may not, though I suspect when push comes to shove most of the stats around things like Faneuil (and Times Square, etc.) are being hugely fudged because it's almost impossible to tell who's a tourist and who's local.

So I did feel compelled to jump in because I think it's an extreme disservice to the nature of Boston's (very wonderful) tourism offerings to compare it to any of the Disney parks -- the nature of their tourism really couldn't be any more different, and the way both cities react to their tourism is also quite different. Orlando is currently building a $500 million performing arts center, and it was funded mostly from tourist taxes. If Boston were going to spend $500 million in tourist taxes on something, I suspect it would be plowed into things more likely to benefit the local community and not tourists -- perhaps something educationally-oriented or medical.

tl;dr - Comparing the volume of people who pass through Faneuil Hall to Walt Disney World is insane and a disservice to the things that Boston is truly exceptional at, tourism ultimately not really being one of those things. They do a great job, but they're not a national leader, which Disney/Orlando firmly is.

[AtkinsonDan]

Originally Posted by table12

I was just responding to Cliff's point about Faneuil Hall having more visitors than Disney World, which is deeply inaccurate. It does (sort of?) have more visitors than the Magic Kingdom park within Disney World. But they're not paid admission, which makes it borderline impossible to determine who really are "tourists" at Faneuil Hall, whereas at the Magic Kingdom it's very clear-cut. And when Orlando broke through the 50 million tourists in a year milestone in 2010, you have to assume the vast majority of those are going to Walt Disney World anyway, just not all to the Magic Kingdom itself.

"Disney World" in aggregate definitely gets more visitors than Faneuil Hall (don't forget that Disney World's property is twice the size of Manhattan and is far and away the most visited resort in the world), but the Magic Kingdom itself may not, though I suspect when push comes to shove most of the stats around things like Faneuil (and Times Square, etc.) are being hugely fudged because it's almost impossible to tell who's a tourist and who's local.

So I did feel compelled to jump in because I think it's an extreme disservice to the nature of Boston's (very wonderful) tourism offerings to compare it to any of the Disney parks -- the nature of their tourism really couldn't be any more different, and the way both cities react to their tourism is also quite different. Orlando is currently building a $500 million performing arts center, and it was funded mostly from tourist taxes. If Boston were going to spend $500 million in tourist taxes on something, I suspect it would be plowed into things more likely to benefit the local community and not tourists -- perhaps something educationally-oriented or medical.

tl;dr - Comparing the volume of people who pass through Faneuil Hall to Walt Disney World is insane and a disservice to the things that Boston is truly exceptional at, tourism ultimately not really being one of those things. They do a great job, but they're not a national leader, which Disney/Orlando firmly is.

Your posts have been very informative. Please do not hesitate to share these statistics and subject matter background.

[table12]

In terms of Seattle vs. Boston, it's actually pretty muddy stats wise. If you look at their officially published numbers, Boston has almost twice the visitors Seattle has:

Boston Statistics | Occupancy Rate, Visitor Statistics

Seattle: Facts And Figures

However, Seattle claims that tourism generates $5.9 billion in revenue on 10.2 million tourists, whereas Boston's claiming $8.6 billion in revenue off of 22.5 million visitors.

Right out of the gate you can see something's very wrong with these numbers. I have a hunch Boston's counting daytrippers, whereas Seattle is only counting overnight visitors. My gut sense is they probably do an equal volume of "true" tourists when all is said and done. I can say with certainty that if Orlando got around 50 million visitors when Boston's 22.5 million number was published then something's wonky with Boston's number. Boston simply doesn't get slightly less than half of Orlando's volume, there's just no way unless they're including day trippers in their numbers. I know Orlando only counts people who stay at least one night, so my hunch is Boston doesn't. Throw in a bunch of students who don't switch their residency when they go to college in Boston and maybe you've got your answer.

Sorry to go on and on about this, I just find it interesting.

[table12]

Originally Posted by AtkinsonDan

Your posts have been very informative. Please do not hesitate to share these statistics and subject matter background.

Thank you! I'm trying not to be a Debbie Downer about Boston's tourism, because I truly believe Boston is an amazing place, just trying to inject some reality in it. Those lists that Yahoo, MSN, etc. publish about tourism are often kind of deceiving so I just wanted to clarify that if you break the stats down you're usually going to come up with some very different findings than those lists would purport. Though I admit I'm guilty of using a Forbes list in my first post, it's just that that's the most accurate list (at least based on my experiences) I could find quickly. Ultimately it's all subjective because stats can certainly lie, but working directly in tourism and having spent significant time in both Orlando and Boston and with their respective tourism bureaus, I think I have a fairly accurate sense of where things currently stand.

In terms of the Seattle vs. Boston tourism thing, my personal opinion is Boston probably gets a little more volume than Seattle, but Seattle most likely gets more leisure tourism than Boston which makes it more likely to hear people talk about their vacation to Seattle, something you might be less likely to hear about Boston. If you go by their official stats, Boston wins, but I think think the #'s are inaccurate because Boston definitely doesn't get over *twice* the volume Seattle does -- no way.