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24
Gulf Coast tourism fared better than most during 2020
The numbers are in.
And despite a pandemic and an active hurricane season, they show that we along the Gulf Coast have many reasons to be thankful.
Losses in our state and local tourism industry were expected last year given all that it threw at us, but based on the Alabama Tourism Industry 2020 Economic Impact Report, the Gulf Coast – and the state as a whole – fared better than most.
Compared to the national average of 42 percent, Alabama tourism dollars dropped 20 percent last year from $16.7 billion to $13.3 billion, placing our state in the top five in the nation for the smallest percentage drop, according to the tourism report released last month. Despite travel restrictions and beaches being temporarily closed, 22.5 million people still visited our state, and the tourism industry generated $4.6 billion in state earnings during 2020.
If we weathered 2020 well as a state, we did even better locally. Per usual, the Gulf Coast region, including both Baldwin and Mobile counties, accounted for the most tourism dollars spent and the most visitors. Baldwin County's number of visitors dropped from 6.8 million to 5.9 million last year, creating a 5.4 percent drop in revenue since 2019. Mobile County's number of visitors dropped from 3.3 million in 2019 to 2.8 million in 2020, creating a 12.1 percent drop in revenue. Tourism employment numbers also dropped 6.4 percent and 12.2 percent in each county respectively.
Despite those decreases, Baldwin and Mobile counties alone contributed $2.02 billion to the state's $4.6 billion in total tourism earnings, meaning our area was responsible for about 45% of both tourism expenditures and travel-related earnings. Why are those earnings important? They prevent us from paying additional taxes. "Without those taxes, each household in Alabama would have had to pay $427 in additional taxes to maintain current service levels," the report states.
It may be tempting to question how important tourism is to our area when you're stuck on I-10 in bumper-to-bumper traffic or the wait time at your favorite seafood restaurant is double how long it would be during our cooler months, but hopefully you can take a bit of solace in the fact that traffic helps our economy thrive.
And the economic outlook continues to remain positive. The report views last year as a temporary setback that we are already quickly working to overcome, continuing the growth trend in tourist spending – 85 percent in the last decade – that began during the recovery efforts from the BP Oil Spill.
The report summarizes the reasons to be optimistic: "The pent-up demand for travel by consumers, along with an incomparable level of public sector reinforcement, is providing a clear and substantial economic boost to the travel industry. Going forward in 2021 and beyond, the economic growth platform provided by these factors will be the biggest that has been seen in decades."
