Visit Anaheim, the official destination marketing organization (DMO) of Anaheim, has confirmed that Anaheim set a new visitor volume record in 2016. For the fourth year in a row, Anaheim broke the previous record by welcoming more than 23 million visitors.
Overall visitor growth in Anaheim is up 2.3 percent from 2015, leading to a nearly 33 percent growth since 2011. Anaheim visitors also spent 7.2 percent more in Orange County in 2016 than the previous year, contributing $8.1 billion to the local economy. Over the last five years, total visitor spending jumped 74 percent. A full report on visitor and destination growth will be available this spring.
Additionally, more hotels were proposed and built, theme park expansion was announced, and the number of breweries doubled in 2016, according to Jay Burress, president and CEO, Visit Anaheim.
Anaheim also continues to serve as a popular meetings and convention destination. The Anaheim Convention Center, the largest convention center on the West Coast, hosted many events in 2016 that reached record attendance levels, including National Association of Music Merchants' annual convention, Natural Products Expo West and California Dental Association. Growing event attendance was welcomed by Anaheim and Garden Grove hotels, which added more than 1,400 rooms in 2016 to the overall hotel inventory of the two cities.