Arizona Tourism Back To Pre-SB 1070 Levels

Published: Tuesday, July 22, 2014 - 12:07pm

Arizona tourism is back to where it was before the recession and SB 1070. A top Arizona Tourism official says, however, it is still nowhere near where it should be. 

The Arizona Office of Tourism says 39.1 million people visited the state and stayed here at least one night in 2013. That’s the state’s best performance since it had 38.7 million visitors in 2007. 

Tourism Director Sherry Henry said the recovery has been a long time in coming.

“We're not up as much as we would otherwise like to be because some of the other states are up more. And, so we've lost a little bit of market share over the last eight or nine years," Henry said.

Henry says some of that was the impact of the recession, which hit Arizona particularly hard, meaning less money for tourism promotion. 

But the numbers show the impact of losing convention business because of SB 1070 has had a particularly long-term effect, since major conferences are planned three or more years in advance.