California Tourism Highlights

 Importance of travel and tourism to the California economy

• Visitors to California spent $95.1 billion in 2010. Travel spending increased by 7.4 percent from the preceding year. ⁽¹⁾
• During 2010, travel spending in California directly supported 873,000 jobs with earnings of $29.9 billion. Travel spending generated the greatest number of jobs in accommodation and food services (516,000) and arts, entertainment and recreation (209,000 jobs) ⁽¹⁾
• 18 percent of all travel spending in the state in 2010 was attributable to international travel.
• Travel spending in 2010 generated $2.1 billion in local taxes and $4 billion in state taxes. ⁽¹⁾

Visitor volume and market share

• Approximately 213 million domestic and international person trips were taken to California in 2010. ^(2,4,5,6,9)

Domestic Travel

• 199 million domestic person trips were taken to and through California in 2010, up 9 percent from 2009.⁽²⁾ Californians themselves are the mainstay of the state's travel and tourism industry, comprising 77 percent of domestic travel, or 154 million person-trips⁽²⁾.
• California’s top out-of-state domestic markets are Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Oregon, Washington and New York.⁽³⁾
  
• California has the largest market share of domestic travel among all 50 states with a mark of 11.45 percent in 2010.⁽²⁾ California had a 11.37 percent share of domestic leisure travel in 2010.⁽²⁾
• Approximately 28.3 million domestic travelers flew to and through California on U.S. carriers in 2010. Domestic air traffic at California airports increased by 1.6% over 2009.  ^(7,8,9) 

  -     Of California’s approximately 13.6 million international visitors 5.7 million were from overseas in 2010.  California enjoyed a 21.5 percent share of all overseas travel to the U.S. ^(4,9)

-       California's top overseas visitor markets in 2009 were: United Kingdom (683,000), Japan (545,000), Australia (502,000), China PRC - not including Hong Kong (399,000), S. Korea (390,000), Germany (388,000), France (382,000) and India (184,000).^(4,9)