Understand Who's Visiting and Why

Before you develop a plan to attract cultural tourists to your cultural organization, you need to know who they are and how to connect with them. Understanding where these people come from and why, as well as how long they stay, will help you put your marketing dollars to work.

Nationally:

• According to research done by the National Endowment for the Arts, there are more than 199 million adult travelers in the US. About 46% of these folks included cultural, arts, heritage or historic activities while on a one-way trip of 50 miles or more during the past year. That's more than 92 million tourists who travel for cultural reasons each year.

• Among these Cultural Tourists, the most popular cultural activities were: visiting historic sites (31%), visiting museums (24 percent), visiting art galleries (15%) and seeing live performances (14%).

In Massachusetts:

• In 2003, Massachusetts was ranked 15th among the 50 states, attracting 2.2 percent of America's travel market, or 27.1 million people.

• Of that number, 25.7 million tourists came to Massachusetts from out of state; 1.4 million came from outside the US. The majority of the domestic travelers come from New England, Pennsylvania, and New York.

• The typical domestic traveler visits during the summer, travels by car, and stays an average of 3.6 nights here. More than 25% of these visitors (6.5 million people) are

All of Massachusetts' Regions Benefit from Tourism!

• Domestic travelers to Massachusetts make 10.6 million trips annually to Greater Boston, representing 43 percent of all travel.

• Cape Cod & The Islands have 4.7 million trips per year, or 19 percent of domestic travelers

• Visitors to Western Massachusetts represent 13 percent of Massachusetts travel, or 3.3 million trips.

• Visitors North of Boston comprise 11 percent of Massachusetts travel or 2.7 million trips.

• Annual travel in Central Massachusetts totals 1.9 million trips or 7 percent of the market.

• South of Boston travelers represent 7 percent of Massachusetts visits, or 1.7 million trips.