Visit Galveston offers various advertising opportunities to connect with potential visitors, locals and beyond!
Visit Galveston is the most trusted travel resource for Galveston Island and knows how expensive it is for local businesses to promote their services and products. Largely based on reaching the Houston metro area, the cost of advertising is expensive. Yet island businesses face a unique set of circumstances because they are not located in the big city and have to deal with seasonal visitation trends. We understand this and Visit Galveston offers a variety of ways to affordably reach a highly-qualified audience that is planning their next visit to the island. Through effective print, digital, and native advertising, we'll connect you with locals and visitors searching for places to stay, things to do, restaurants, attractions, and so much more.
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The travel sector is an integral part of the Galveston Island economy, which begins with actual spending by visitors, but also considers the downstream effects of this injection of spending into the local economy.
Visitations rebounded by 23.9% versus 2020 as Galveston Island welcomed 6.5 million visitors in 2021, albeit 11.8% below 2019 levels. The shortfall was primarily due to fewer cruise passenger embarkations in 2021, which were down 73.2% from 2019 due to the halt of cruise travel.
In 2021, visitors to Galveston spend a RECORD $913 million generating $1.2 billion in economic activity for the island. Driving the increase were record overnight visitors, whose spending rose to $245 per person compared to $229 in 2019. Day visitors spent $53 per person and cruise passengers contributed $81 per person.
Tourism supported a total of 10,821 jobs when indirect impacts are considered. Compared to 2019, total tourism-supported jobs were still 6.2% below the pre-pandemic average, while direct jobs were 1.1% lower. Wages grew faster in order to attract talent back to the industry. Estimated direct tourism supported personal incomes in 2021 were 6.4% above 2019 levels.
Since 2018, the amount of revenue generated by vacation rentals to hotel occupancy tax (HOT) revenue has grown from 28% to 51% in 2022. Tourism also contributed $30.3 million in local sales and property tax revenue accounting for 50% of the City of Galveston's General Fund.
