Increase in International Visitors to Philadelphia

Elise Vider, Flying Kite -- "The world economy may be in the doldrums, but the world continues to visit Philadelphia. In 2010, Philly was the 13th most internationally visited in the U.S. with a lowball estimate of 633,000 visitors from overseas, up seven percent from 2009.

"The numbers come from the Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau (PCVB), the city's international tourism marketing arm. (By another measure, 14% of 2.5 million visitors to the Independence Visitor Center are from overseas.) Kathleen Titus, the PCVB's executive director for tourism, notes that in 2000, only 397,000 international visitors were counted.

"Since then, a lot has changed. The PCVB mounted a sophisticated marketing campaign to attract visitors from overseas and it continues to have a better product to sell: That includes successful Facebook pages in at least four overseas countries, like Italy. 'We've really become a sexy, metropolitan city,' Titus says.

"Also changing is the origin of the visitors. For many years, Western Europe dominated, with visitors flocking from the UK, France and Germany. Those countries continue to be well represented, but the big explosion now is in visitation from India, China and elsewhere in Asia, Titus says. (In 2010, the top five countries in terms of visitor spending in Philly were, in order, the UK, France, China, South Korea and Brazil.)"

For more on Philadelphia's growth and the international visitors attracted to this great city, please read the entirety of Elise Vider's article here.