{"id":330613,"date":"2026-05-24T15:45:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T15:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/330613\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T15:45:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T15:45:08","slug":"tourism-gains-spread-across-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/330613\/","title":{"rendered":"Tourism gains spread across California"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tCalifornia&#8217;s tourism economy is growing, according to a new study by Visit California.The study suggests tourism generated just under $160 billion in 2025 and supported more than one million jobs. &#8220;California is still a place where people dream of visiting,&#8221; said Brenda Kirian, director of sales and marketing  at the Hyatt Regency Sacramento. &#8220;You&#8217;ve got the mountains, you have the beach, you have the agriculture areas, and you&#8217;ve got big cities. There&#8217;s still just a really strong demand in California which is encouraging to see.&#8221;Sacramento is one of the cities in California that&#8217;s seeing big gains.&#8221;When a lot of people think about tourism they think about Las Vegas or New York, but the reality is a place like Sacramento has more than 15 million visitors annually, they spend well over $4 billion into our economy, it&#8217;s tens of thousands of jobs, so it&#8217;s not just about the big destinations,&#8221; Mike Testa with Visit Sacramento. &#8220;Tourism has huge impacts on smaller cities as well.&#8221;Testa says the city of Sacramento collects hotel taxes, and claims those taxes are up 40% since 2022.&#8221;If you look at tourism like a stock market portfolio, our offerings are very diverse and we&#8217;re seeing the results of that,&#8221; Testa said.In 2025, travel fell across the U.S. according to the Visit California study, but visitor spending rose 1.7% in the state.&#8221;Sacramento International Airport continues to expand, so there&#8217;s more airline crew business coming into the market. Conventions continue to be very strong,&#8221; Kirian said. &#8220;Business travel is picking up still a little.&#8221;Kirian credits festivals and concerts, the upcoming X Games, NCAA basketball tournament, Iron Man, and the California International Marathon as major contributing factors to the increase in tourism in Sacramento.According to the study, 55 of California&#8217;s 58 counties saw an increase in tourism.&#8221;Before, people were looking for a deal,&#8221; Kirian said. &#8220;Now, people are really looking for experiences when they come to a city.&#8221;See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\tSACRAMENTO, Calif. \u2014 \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>California&#8217;s tourism economy is growing, according to a new study by Visit California.<\/p>\n<p>The study suggests tourism generated just under $160 billion in 2025 and supported more than one million jobs. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;California is still a place where people dream of visiting,&#8221; said Brenda Kirian, director of sales and marketing  at the Hyatt Regency Sacramento. &#8220;You&#8217;ve got the mountains, you have the beach, you have the agriculture areas, and you&#8217;ve got big cities. There&#8217;s still just a really strong demand in California which is encouraging to see.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sacramento is one of the cities in California that&#8217;s seeing big gains.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When a lot of people think about tourism they think about Las Vegas or New York, but the reality is a place like Sacramento has more than 15 million visitors annually, they spend well over $4 billion into our economy, it&#8217;s tens of thousands of jobs, so it&#8217;s not just about the big destinations,&#8221; Mike Testa with Visit Sacramento. &#8220;Tourism has huge impacts on smaller cities as well.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Testa says the city of Sacramento collects hotel taxes, and claims those taxes are up 40% since 2022.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If you look at tourism like a stock market portfolio, our offerings are very diverse and we&#8217;re seeing the results of that,&#8221; Testa said.<\/p>\n<p>In 2025, travel fell across the U.S. according to the Visit California study, but visitor spending rose 1.7% in the state.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Sacramento International Airport continues to expand, so there&#8217;s more airline crew business coming into the market. Conventions continue to be very strong,&#8221; Kirian said. &#8220;Business travel is picking up still a little.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Kirian credits festivals and concerts, the upcoming X Games, NCAA basketball tournament, Iron Man, and the California International Marathon as major contributing factors to the increase in tourism in Sacramento.<\/p>\n<p>According to the study, 55 of California&#8217;s 58 counties saw an increase in tourism.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Before, people were looking for a deal,&#8221; Kirian said. &#8220;Now, people are really looking for experiences when they come to a city.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kcra.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">See more coverage of top California stories here<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kcra.com\/article\/get-kcra-news-on-the-go-download\/44039145\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Download our app<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kcra.com\/subscribe\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Subscribe to our morning newsletter<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@KCRA\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California&#8217;s tourism economy is growing, according to a new study by Visit California.The study suggests tourism generated just&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[47314,137182,137181,7,11751,137183,2075,4194,108137,39541,592,1410,121,123,122,5277,137180,29966,12382],"class_list":["post-330613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-big-city","tag-big-result","tag-brenda-kirian","tag-california","tag-california-politics-360","tag-hotel-taxis","tag-increase","tag-job","tag-mike-testa","tag-new-study","tag-people","tag-place","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news","tag-tourism","tag-tourism-gain","tag-visit-california","tag-visitor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}