The first weekend of May was about as busy at it gets in Nashville: between Morgan Wallen’s Nissan Stadium shows, multiple college and graduation ceremonies, and a Predators playoff game, the city sold more than 75,000 hotel rooms.
That was a new record — and one of a few tourism-related records Nashville has set recently, as 2023 totals provided by the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp (NCVC) showed historic highs. Last year, Nashville saw 16.8 million visitors — breaking records for total number of visitors and visitor spending.
The visitor count is a 4% increase from 2022. Those same tourists also produced record levels of visitor spending — to the tune of $10.56 billion.
Nationwide, inflation is beginning to take a toll on the tourism industry, according to Adam Sacks, the president of Tourism Economics. Even Nashville, coming off last year’s highs, is seeing decreased revenues so far in 2024.
“We don’t take our destination’s success for granted, and in our planning, we work not only on today and tomorrow, but also next year and next decade to keep our industry growing,” said Deanna Ivey, president and CEO of the tourism group.
The NCVC says traveler sentiment does remain strong and, even amidst a slowing economy, travel is “more important than it was to people a year ago.” Economists predict that Nashville’s tourism will continue to grow, at least for the next two years. In 2026, visitor numbers are expected to hit 17.8 million. And the city continues to prepare for expanded tourism, with 2,000 hotel rooms currently under construction and 13,000 more in the pipeline.
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