FILE – Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger delivers her State of the Commonwealth address before a joint session of the Virignia General Assembly at the Capitol, Jan. 19, 2026, in Richmond, Va. (AP Photo\/Steve Helber, File) (Steve Helber, Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Gov. Abigail Spanberger announced a record-high $36.2 billion in tourism spending in the commonwealth. This is an increase of 2.1% over the previous year.<\/p>\n
\u201cVirginia tourism is powering our local economies \u2014 supporting jobs, strengthening small businesses, and investing in our communities. When Americans from across our country and visitors from across the globe come to Virginia, they immediately understand why our beautiful Commonwealth is a world-class destination. With this record-breaking year for tourism, Virginia households saved an average of more than $1,000 in state and local taxes. We\u2019re continuing to build on this momentum and showcase everything our Commonwealth has to offer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Governor Abigail Spanberger<\/p>\n
This included a record 46.6 million domestic and international overnight visitors. Visitors across the commonwealth spent around $99 million per day on average.<\/p>\n
Spanberger also highlighted standout gains in hotel demand in Staunton\/Harrisonburg, Richmond, Roanoke and Charlottesville. Hotel demand has increased 3.1% in Virginia, compared to 1.8% nationwide.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WSLS 10 – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FILE – Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger delivers her State of the Commonwealth address before a joint session of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":810476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453,6808,5148],"class_list":["post-810475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-tourism","tag-virginia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/810476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}