Our Chicago: Tourism & Summer Festivals
CHICAGO (WLS) -- Lollapalooza came to Chicago in 2005 and it's been here ever since. The four-day-long event typically attracts 100,000 people each day to Grant Park.
What do big summer events and festivals mean for the city's economy and Chicago's profile as a tourist destination?
"Lollapalooza's huge. I mean, the sheer impact with that amount of people," Senior Director of Cultural Tourism with Choose Chicago Jason Lesniewicz said. "They're staying our hotels, going to restaurants, they're going to after shows, to venues across the city. So the shear numbers you know that impact is there. But then there's another side effect that we love as the tourism agency. It's these premiere events choosing Chicago to come here and do business. Really helps to raise our profile as a visitor destination."
"It's kind of two-fold for us. We know the economic impact will be there. We've seen it in previous years. But then raising Chicago's profile is what we're all about," Lesniewicz added.
Summer 2024 has been huge for Chicago, and only because of Lollapalooza. Other high-profile events include Sundance and NASCAR.
"We put on great events. This is what we do as a city," Lesniewicz said.
Lesniewicz said Chicago has the infrastructure, hotels and transit helping make it possible for the city to host large gatherings.
"One great thing about the DNC this year, for us, all the delegates get to stay at downtown hotels outside of the security perimeter. So they're able to bring their families, their loved ones, their friends. And we're giving them the tools to explore the city because we know a lot of the delegates will be at McCormick Place and the United Center. But everyone else we're giving them the tools to explore the city, get out and hopefully they'll spend and go to restaurants, go to our attractions, our museums, our cruises. Everything that we have to offer in the summer is available to them and we've given them guides to do that."
The millions of visitors who come to the city each year, need a place to stay. For many, it's one of the city's hotels.
Michael Jacobson is the President and CEO of the Illinois Hotel and Lodging Association. Chicago hotels were hard hit during the pandemic and are still recovering.
"Even if you look at the key metric we measure, hotel occupancy rates, this year we anticipate ending around 67%. That's up from 65% last year. So, good trend that we're continuing to increase. But it's down from 74% during our peak in 2019. So we anticipate 2028 being the year that we reach that pre-pandemic level."
"Lolla weekend is always a pure sell-out. Biggest weekend of the year every single year."
Last year was also a busy time with Taylor Swift performing multiple concerts at Soldier Field.
"DNC will be great as well. And I think it's specific to the DNC, the long-term benefits that we're going to get from the DNC because of the hundreds of journalists we're going to get from around the globe that are going to use the Chicago skyline as their backdrop during their broadcasts. And then also the political influencers that, for better or for worse, have framed the narrative about our city for the last several years, I think we're going to be able to change a lot of the preconceived notions for people that may not have even been in our city for the last decade."
