Overall visitor spending in Spokane County declined in 2011 compared with the previous year, preliminary numbers show. Even so, Visit Spokane President and CEO Cheryl Kilday says the organization expected a drop in activity, and the numbers proved to be better than anticipated.

Visitors spent $819.5 million in Spokane County last year, according to preliminary numbers from a travel spending report provided to Visit Spokane—previously known as the Spokane Regional Convention & Visitors Bureau—by Portland, Ore.-based travel research firm Dean Runyan Associates. That's a 4.4 percent decline compared with the $856.1 million in spending in 2010, but remains ahead of the $803.4 million spent by visitors here in 2009.

While 2011 figures are down, the year's overall numbers are better than expected and show that Spokane's tourism industry has remained fairly stable despite a poor economy, Kilday says.

"In 2011, we still saw strong leisure travel," she says, adding that bus travel activity was strong. "We actually did better than we had feared. We're working extra hard to pull in more in the odd-number years, and in 2011, we were able to pull a lot of things together. We're working aggressively to do the same thing for '13."

Convention planners with state organizations often book with an odd- or even-year rotation so that meetings can alternate between the west and east sides of Washington. Consequently, the convention cycle in Spokane favors even-number years, Kilday says. For regional groups, the rotation may take two or three years to swing back to Spokane.

Spokane also received a visitor spending boost in 2010 from the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

Based on the report, visitors put millions into local and state coffers. For 2011, early figures indicate visitors paid $56 million in taxes. In 2010, the report found that $56.9 million in taxes were collected from visitors to Spokane County, compared with $54.4 million in 2009.

"We just love that our visitors spend money here, and a good chunk of that is paid in taxes," Kilday adds. "It contributes to our quality of life. They pay sales tax, lodging tax, hotel assessments. They also pay for gas taxes, any ticket admission taxes," and other assessments.

The report found that 9,060 jobs were supported by the tourism industry in Spokane County last year. In 2009, 9,290 people were employed in tourism-related jobs. In 2010, that number dropped slightly to 9,240.

Visit Spokane says economic impact from visitor spending comes from three main categories of travel. They are conventions, meetings, and events; leisure travel, which includes such activities as summer vacations or family reunions; and business transient travel, for those who come to town on business.

Early figures for last year say visitor spending for lodging was $122.8 million, down from $125.2 million in 2010, but up from $119.1 million in 2009.

For food service, visitors spent $180.6 million in 2011, preliminary numbers say, up from $180.1 million and $174.2 million in 2010 and 2009, respectively.

Retail sales, early figures say, were $103.6 million last year, down from $104.2 million in 2010 but up from $101 million in 2009.

In just the meetings and events category, Visit Spokane says 2012 so far has 127 conventions and events booked, which are expected to draw 528,000 visitors and generate 84,000 hotel room nights. The projected economic impact of those events is around $187 million. They include the 61st National Square Dance Convention scheduled in late June that's expected to draw 7,000 out-of-town visitors and the National Trust for Historic Preservation convention next fall that's expected to attract about 2,500 attendees.

"2012 will be a good year for us," Kilday says.

Bus travel and other tour groups also are expected to remain strong. Visit Spokane says that in 2011, Spokane saw a steady stream of these travelers for entertainment, shopping, and golf packages.

"A significant number are from Canada," Kilday says. "We have one operator that flies in a number of golf tours, all men. They're Canadian."

Visit Spokane tracks the spending of all travelers coming from more than 50 miles outside of the city and staying at least overnight, Kilday adds.

Kilday says Runyan changed some of its methodology for the reports this year, and when Visit Spokane at first received data, the visitor-spending total for 2009 seemed lower than previously reported, Kilday says. Agency leaders saw that inbound airfares weren't included as before, an important factor to Spokane and its reliance on visitors using the airport, she adds.

"We had to ask them to do a supplemental report for us," she says, for an apples-to-apples comparison of what the agency has tracked yearly. "They had to do it for us, and I think Seattle, because of the impact of the airports."

With more precise airlines data now available, Dean Runyan's recalculation of 2009 figures as requested by Visit Spokane boosted the calculated visitor spending for that year to the $803.4 million figure from $741 million, Kilday says.

She adds, "They went back and updated the 2009 comparatively. The airlines have done a better job of being able to calculate how a point of (inbound) travel impacts a community. They've done a better job being able to separate that out as far as the travel coming into the Spokane area."

The updated report for Spokane includes total inbound visitor airfare only, Kilday adds.

"We are concerned about inbound travel," Kilday says. "It wasn't materially changing the difference between the two years; 2010 is still better than 2009; 2010 is like that high water mark for us in Spokane."

The agency will receive final numbers for 2011 around February or March of 2013, when Runyan is able to calculate any adjustments, including from various government agency reports.