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One big difference between the two is how people see their respective cities. Chicago is almost like a nation-state. You see the Chicago flag everywhere, even tattooed on citizens' bodies. Chicago Flag Tattoos
Toronto seems a much younger place where people don't necessarily identify themselves with the city. Chicago has its own accent, its own foods, its own musical genres.....There is even a Chicago diaspora....when Chicagoans move to other cities, countries...they tend to identify quite strongly with their hometown..(Sweet Home Chicago). Heck, diaspora Chicagoans have opened Chicago restaurants by the hundreds in cities far and wide.
Toronto's identity seems much more wrapped up with its status within Canada as the largest most international city.
This is the reason why I left Chicago. I feel like a stranger in my home region, because I wasn't raised this way.
Growing up when Chicago major league teams were doing really well and people around us would be "we're winning!" My Dad, would only half joking would say "Whats this "we" stuff, I haven't lived in the city of Chicago since the 60s!" Growing up in the far northwest suburbs, our family went to Milwaukee many times to go to their festivals, museums/zoos, airport, etc. This is where I get the idea that smaller Midwestern cities can be a suitable alternative to Chicago. Don't get me wrong we still liked Chicago, went there, had friends and family there, said good things about, went to Portillos once in a while, etc., but through a lot of self examination I realize there are reasons why I just can't seem to fit in in Chicago.
If it were not for the very things you brought up, I actually would have no problem, and would not have left.
Toronto does not get visitor counts comparable to that of Chicago.
One only needs to walk down Yonge Street and then walk down Michigan Avenue. There are also far more hotel rooms in downtown Chicago (especially high-end hotel rooms), and vastly more tourist attractions.
This is true also, even with odd statistics Chicago would still win, it's just not as big as it looks like.
Chicago might have more hotel rooms and probably which probably related to more visitors from different parts of the U.S....a country of over 300 million people.... but speaking in terms of international visitors, the link says it all. Toronto is in the top 50 in the world. Chicago was not listed at all in the 100.
Chicago might have more hotel rooms and probably which probably related to more visitors from different parts of the U.S....a country of over 300 million people.... but speaking in terms of international visitors, the link says it all. Toronto is in the top 50 in the world. Chicago was not listed at all in the 100.
No I don't think Chicago has more international visitors (it's only 9/10 in the U.S.), but more true visitors, even when discounting how it tracks domestic visitors. (As it's drawing from a country of 300+ million vs 30+ million) Chicago and Boston both have around 1.2 million international visitors a year and has been pretty stable switching back and forth in the 9 and 10 slot for the last 2 decades. The list you posted cuts off at 1.4 million so yeah, Chicago and Boston didn't make the cut. Chicago is a major U.S. domestic travel and convention destination, so even if Chicago is kind of fudging what counts and what doesn't, it's still high, thus why the hotel #'s are there to support the amount of travelers.
No I don't think Chicago has more international visitors (it's only 9/10 in the U.S.), but more true visitors, even when discounting how it tracks domestic visitors.
Yea that's true. Chicago has 40-something million "total" visitors.
Nobody's inflating anything, all the domestic tourism numbers from every city in the US include the same measurement. Chicago is the center of a region full of cities within a day's drive of it. People frequently do weekend trips from Cleveland, St.Louis, Detroit, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, etc.........Those 37,000 hotel rooms downtown aren't full of people who come from Schaumburg, who can take Metra back to where they live in the same day. There is no statistics or reports that point this out. Its all conjecture, but just think logically.
It's a similar situation with Toronto, as more than 60% of Toronto's international tourism numbers come from adjacent US, which include Buffalo, Niagara falls, Detroit and Rochester.
When you drop US from Toronto's numbers and Canada from Chicago's numbers, both Toronto and Chicago's overseas tourism numbers are similar and rank behind cities such as San Francisco, Miami and Orlando. They're both inland, cold weather cities with no real major sellable points, nor having a solid tourism culture. Chicago just happens to have more cities around it, and because of the conditions of some of those said cities, more people are motivated to visit. It is what it is, no need to discount it as being insignificant because of it. Thats ridiculous, the throngs of people on the streets of downtown Chicago don't count because they're from the midwest? What the......
Overnight visitors is more relevant if coupled with length of stay or if they are there on vacation. Chicago has a large portion of business travelers always in and out of the city. I still think something is off about how Chicago is tracking #'s, b/c according to them, they have more domestic visitors than New York City. I think NYC might only track it if you actually stay that night, where as Chicago tracks day trips. If anybody has official stats to how they are tracking that would be helpful.
Yeah I've seen that, but do you really think Chicago has more domestic visitors than NYC? If that is true, kind of crazy, and would speak volumes to how in the midwest it's Chicago then everybody else, vs in the NE there are 4 pretty good big city options.
Not at all, where does it imply that? From what I read, over 42 million of NYC's visitors are leisure domestic visitors alone. I'm pretty sure that NYC passes that 18 million mark easily. The tribune breaks down the 46 million number, showing that 16.7 million of the 46m visitors are day leisure trips. 7.2 are overnight business travelers, and 3.8 million are day business trips.
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