Even if you don’t work in the tourism industry, you can get a sense by living in our city of how important it is to us. Visitor spending transactions in our city are an entry point for billions of dollars to spread throughout our economy, affecting so many more industries, people, and projects than just our thriving hospitality industry. When visitors spend in our city, every one of those dollars is spent several times over before leaving our local economy. Sometimes it can be hard to visualize and understand the effect of tourism dollars beyond the restaurant or the cab fare, so here’s an example of one of the many ways that those dollars spread throughout our city.

(photo by Valerie Boucvalt)

The Path of a New Orleans Tourism Dollar

Let’s say that a family comes to town on a spring vacation. They make sure to stop and get beignets, hit up the zoo and aquarium, and they have a fun family night at City Park playing putt putt. At each stop, they are spending money, bringing in revenue for each of the businesses they visit, as well as important sales tax revenue that our city utilizes in many different ways. But that is only the beginning. From there, the cashier at the putt putt course uses his paycheck to get his car fixed by a mechanic Uptown and the gift shop manager at the zoo uses her paycheck to buy tickets to see a play. As the tourism dollars continue on, the Uptown mechanic uses the revenue he gets from the putt putt cashier to buy fresh roses for his wife for their anniversary, and the gift shop manager uses her paycheck to buy new, local art to decorate her walls at home. And so on, and so on. The important fuel that visitors bring to our city spreads throughout our economy in so many directions.

It’s important to remember that there are many different facets that make up a strong economy and since tourism is our leading industry, it is the number once source of fuel for our city. Whether or not you work in the tourism industry, tourism works for you.