Recovery is slow, Los Angeles tourism hopes for Asian tourists

Tourism officials say Los Angeles' tourism industry won't fully recover from the epidemic until 2025. Overseas visitors and meetings/events have been slower to recover compared to domestic visitors.

Data from the Los Angeles Tourism Bureau’s annual Market Outlook Forum showed that the city of Los Angeles received 46.2 million tourists in 2022, approximately 91% of the total number of tourists in 2019. The number of tourists is expected to reach 49.3 million this year, equivalent to 97% of 2019.

However, detailed data shows that overseas tourists (excluding international tourists from Mexico and Canada) will only reach 2.3 million people in 2022, which is only 47% of 2019. Overseas tourists are expected to increase to 3.35 million this year, equivalent to 68% of 2019.

Adam Burke, CEO of the Los Angeles Tourism Bureau, pointed out that the slow recovery of overseas tourists has had a huge impact on consumption in Los Angeles. The consumption of three domestic tourists in the United States is equivalent to the consumption of one overseas tourist. "It's no exaggeration that Los Angeles' economy won't fully recover until our overseas markets fully recover," he said. "We still have a long way to go."

For Los Angeles, the recovery of the Asian market has a particularly huge impact. In 2019, Asian became Los Angeles' largest overseas market, with 1.2 million tourists. "Even if Asiana can only recover to 38% of 2019, it will become our largest overseas market," Burke said.

Asian tourists are exactly the target tourists of the Los Angeles Tourism Bureau. "Compared to the past, we are less focused on visitor numbers and more focused on the highest-yielding markets and customers," Burke said.

Burke said the Los Angeles Tourism Bureau is working hard to speed up the recovery. In terms of leisure tourism within the United States, Los Angeles' economy has fully recovered, and 43.4 million American tourists are expected to visit this year.

To promote recovery, the Los Angeles Tourism Board launched an $8.6 million global campaign, which launched in the United States last week. "We're certainly not taking our foot off the gas when it comes to leisure travel within the United States," Burke said.

Particularly with a looming recession, he's focused on attracting core tourists. "I think that's part of the reason to continue to invest heavily in leisure travel within the U.S. because it's a very competitive market," Burke said. "The good news is, so far, we haven't seen any real reduction in demand. I "I want to point out that there are several consumer sentiment studies that show that consumers are increasingly worried about the economic downturn, which is certainly something we are watching closely. But at least for now, this is not dampening tourist enthusiasm."