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Philadelphia’s Tourism Industry Releases 2022 Annual Reports

For the first time, the Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority, Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau, Philadelphia Visitor Center Corporation, and VISIT PHILADELPHIA® release Annual Reports together to provide a complete snapshot of industry results.

Below are highlights from each annual report, with links to the full reports for reference.

Visit Philadelphia & Philadelphia Visitor Center Corporation Report Findings : Visit Philadelphia Results 1 :

In 2022, Philadelphia welcomed 39.8 million domestic visitors to the 5-county region (Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia Counties), with 24.3 million domestic visitors in Philadelphia alone (up 15% from 2021).
$7.1 billion in domestic visitor spending across the 5-county region, with over $3.9 billion directly spent in Philadelphia (up 47% from 2021)
Visitor spending generated $11.6 billion in economic impact in the 5-country region, including $6.02 billion in Philadelphia (up 45% from 2021)
$940 million in tax revenue was generated across the 5-counties (up 28% vs 2021), with $335 million in Philadelphia (up 15% from 2021)
89,480 jobs were directly supported by visitor spending throughout the region
Visit Philadelphia marketing strategies generated over 306 million ad impressions, 33 million social media impressions, 13.9 million VisitPhilly.com pageviews and 3,300 tracked and/or placed stories about Philadelphia.

Angela Val, President & CEO, VISIT PHILADELPHIA

“Visit Philadelphia is proud to report that 2022 was a year of strong resurgence and recovery for the leisure travel segment and Philadelphia’s broader tourism industry. As our Annual Report shows, we outpaced 2021 metrics in nearly every category and are on the right track to reach our benchmark, record-setting numbers from 2019. I am confident that we will look back at 2022 as the year where the tides turned for the better and our industry was able to focus on what we do best: welcome visitors to America’s greatest city.”

Philadelphia Visitor Center Corporation Results 2 :

Welcomed 1.3 million visitors through the Independence Visitor Center, Love Park Visitor Center and the Philly PHLASH Downtown Loop (up 53% from 2021)
Provided Philly PHLASH rides to an average of 9,800 riders per month of operation (up 22% from 2021)
Increased website traffic to 54.6 million (up 43% from 2021)
$3.6 million operating budget in 2022. Generated 55% of earned revenue from a combination of gift shop sales, concession, ticket and advertising sales, and private event rentals. 45% of operations supported by grants and federal funding.

Deborah O’Brien, Board Chair, Philadelphia Visitor Center Corporation

“Last year was a time of promising new beginnings for the Philadelphia Visitor Center Corporation, proudly embracing our new Mission and Vision as we continued on our road to recovery. Throughout 2022, we had the distinct pleasure of again opening our doors to provide a welcoming and informative first impression of our great city to over one million visitors. And it’s just the beginning. We look forward to working closely with our fellow industry leaders to deepen our impact and continue on the path of post-pandemic industry growth.”

Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau & Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority Report Results :

Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau Results 3 :

2022 brought the consistent return of large, in-person events to the Pennsylvania Convention Center, which culminated in a full slate of 19 citywide 4 events for the first time since 2019.
PHLCVB delivered 224 events in 2022, welcoming 494,300 attendees and 513,400 room nights, stimulating spending in many sectors that resulted in $345 million in economic impact.
On average, and when compared to days without a citywide event, in 2022, citywides delivered 11% higher hotel occupancy.
In 2022, 444,200 overseas visitors to Philadelphia were responsible for $549 million in economic impact, with over 4,664 full-time jobs supported and $196 million in personal income generated for Philadelphia residents.
Overseas arrivals to Pennsylvania consistently outperformed the national average. Inbound overseas visits to Philadelphia recovered to 63%, while the national average was at 57%.
The top recovery markets for Philadelphia aligned with PHLCVB’s key market-focused strategy and included India recovering to 80%, Netherlands to 88%, and Ireland to 97% of pre-pandemic levels.

2022 was a significant year of accomplishments that included landmark announcements, the steady return of meetings and events, and the resumption of overseas travel as borders reopened and international visitors returned to the city.

Gregg Caren, President & CEO, Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau

“2022 was an important year for Philadelphia on its continued post-COVID recovery, from winning our bid to host the world’s largest sporting event, the 2026 FIFA World Cup, to welcoming back visitors from across the world as overseas travel resumed in earnest. A steady influx of meeting attendees and leisure travelers to Philadelphia meant economic support for the city and reliable jobs for the tourism and hospitality industry. The success we saw last year is thanks to the steadfast collaboration among the city’s hospitality partners, whose commitment and hard work will continue to spotlight Philadelphia as an unparalleled destination for travel.”

Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority Results:

The Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority hosted 109 events in 2022 (including 41 PHLCVB-booked events) with 552,000 attendees, generating $406 million in economic impact.
Continued its commitment to sustainability, increased daily purchase of renewable energy certificates to 50%, exceeded its landfill diversion rate goal of 50%, and reduced its carbon footprint through upgrades to lighting, HVAC, and other operations.
Working with trade show labor partners, the PCCA extended its Customer Satisfaction Agreement through 2034 and jointly launched the Hospitality Industry Advancement Trust to provide enhanced training opportunities in the areas of safety, development of technical skills, and customer-service and hospitality — “Safety, Skills, and Smiles.”
Earned its Global Biorisk Advisory Council (GBAC) STAR reaccreditation, identifying the Center as a showcase example of commitment to ensuring a clean, safe, and healthy environment for its employees, customers, and event attendees.

John J. McNichol, President & CEO, Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority

“The PHLCVB and PCC welcomed large, in-person events back to the Pennsylvania Convention Center, culminating in a full slate of 19 citywides for the first time since 2019. As this report shows, conventions and meetings are a key driver of the Greater Philadelphia area’s hospitality industry, supporting tens of thousands of regional jobs. Every event matters, and that is why the Center and our partners are constantly working to improve our operations and deliver the best possible customer service. We are building on last year’s growth and in 2023 look forward to welcoming an estimated one million event attendees who will help fuel our local economy by staying in our hotels, shopping at our stores, visiting our attractions, and dining at our restaurants.”

The 2022 Annual Reports come on the heels of recent announcements surrounding Greater Philadelphia’s strong post-pandemic recovery, including a report released in January 2023 by Visit Philadelphia, PHLCVB and the Greater Philadelphia Hotel Association. This report pointed to Center City Philadelphia’s continued hotel resurgence in 2022, showing increases in occupancy, average daily rate (ADR), revenue per available room (RevPAR), supply, demand and hotel room revenue.

Collectively, all 2022 findings point to a strong, continued tourism resurgence in Greater Philadelphia. Notably, Tourism Economics has projected that both Center City and Philadelphia County will surpass most pre-pandemic hotel benchmarks in 2023-2024.

_______________________

1 Source: EConsult Solutions; Visit Philadelphia 2 Source: EConsult Solutions; Philadelphia Visitor Center Corporation 3 Source: Tourism Economics 4 Gatherings that generate 2,000 or more hotel room nights on the peak night of the event

NOTE: All data was accurate at the time of printing, based on currently available data. Data may change as new information becomes available.

About the Pennsylvania Convention Center

The Pennsylvania Convention Center is located in Center City Philadelphia at the heart of the city’s many cultural offerings and world-class dining and entertainment scene. Managed by ASM Global, the Center is the 14th largest facility in the nation and features one of the largest exhibit spaces and ballrooms in the Northeastern U.S. The meetings, conventions, trade shows, and other events hosted by the Center attract attendees from across the country and around the world to Philadelphia, making the facility the largest economic driver of the region’s hospitality industry. For more information, visit paconvention.com .

About the PHLCVB:

The Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau (PHLCVB) creates positive economic impact across the Philadelphia region, driving job growth and promoting the health and vibrancy of our hospitality industry by marketing the destination, the Pennsylvania Convention Center, and attracting overnight visitors. The PHLCVB’s work engages our partners, the local Philadelphia community as well as culturally and ethnically diverse regional, national and international convention, sporting event and tourism customers. The PHLCVB is also the official tourism promotion agency for the city of Philadelphia globally and is responsible for growing the number of overseas leisure visitors who come to the region each year. To learn more, visit DiscoverPHL.com .

About the Philadelphia Visitor Center Corporation

The Philadelphia Visitor Center Corporation is a Pennsylvania nonprofit, 501(c)3 organization, that works in cooperation with VISIT PHILADELPHIA®, the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau, the City of Philadelphia, National Park Service, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia Visitor Center Corporation operates the Independence Visitor Center in cooperation with the National Park Service. The Independence Visitor Center is the primary point of orientation for Independence National Historical Park and the official visitor center of the Philadelphia region, including Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties. In addition, the Corporation operates the LOVE Park Visitor Center, City Hall Visitor Center, the Philly PHLASH® Downtown Loop transit service, and the private event space, The Liberty View at Independence Visitor Center. Visit us at www.phlvisitorcenter.com, and follow @PHLVisitorCenter on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

About Visit Philadelphia:

VISIT PHILADELPHIA® is our name and our mission. As the region’s official tourism marketing agency, we build Greater Philadelphia’s image, drive visitation and boost the economy.

On Greater Philadelphia’s official visitor website, visitphilly.com , visitors can explore things to do, upcoming events, themed itineraries and hotel packages. Compelling photography and videos, interactive maps and detailed visitor information make the site an effective trip-planning tool. Visitors can also find loads of inspiration on Visit Philly’s social media channels.

Note to Editors: For high-resolution photos and high-definition B-roll of Greater Philadelphia, visit the Photos & Video section of visitphilly.com/mediacenter .

Watch CBS News

Philadelphia's Tourism Marketing Organization Gets New Name

November 11, 2013 / 1:50 PM EST / CBS Philadelphia

By Molly Daly

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The organization that markets the Philadelphia area as a tourist destination has changed its name from the tongue-twisting Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation -- also known as GPTMC - to a more self-explanatory moniker -- Visit Philadelphia .

"We think this is an act of mercy," says Visit Philadelphia President and CEO Meryl Levitz.

Besides being a lot easier to say, Levitz says Visit Philadelphia is a lot more inviting.

"It's a new name for a 17-year-old organization that tells people exactly what we want them to do."

Levitz says the renaming was driven in large part by technology.

"The word Philadelphia is searched much more frequently than any other word for Philadelphia," Levitz says, "and so it made sense to go with it."

And Visit Philadelphia is more in line with the visitphilly.com website. But does Levitz feel any nostalgia about casting aside the old name?

"GPTMC will live on in my heart," she says, "but you're not going to be seeing it on a billboard."

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How Angela Val Plans to Bring Tourists Back to Philadelphia

She took over at perhaps the worst time to be in charge of Visit Philly. Fortunately for us — and for the city’s all-important tourism economy — this is the moment she’s spent her whole career preparing for.

Get a compelling long read and must-have lifestyle tips in your inbox every Sunday morning — great with coffee!

Angela Val, CEO of Visit Philly / Photography by Aaron Richter

Visit Philadelphia. These are two words that until recently made a lot of sense together — a sonorous duet, if you will. A simple truism. As a tourist destination, the Philly region had the reliability of an index fund — steadily growing, record-breaking numbers of visitors each year, topping out at 46 million in 2019. Popularity seemed preordained: The pope visited here in 2015. The next year, the Democratic National Convention came to town. The year after that, the NFL draft . So many different national publications — the New York Times , National Geographic , GQ — were declaring us the place to visit that it almost became annoying: Couldn’t you be a little more original? But really, who could blame them? It was a good time to visit Philadelphia, which meant it was a good time to be Visit Philadelphia, the nonprofit charged with marketing the city to tourists. The city was practically selling itself.

These days, the city is in need of a bit more salesmanship, and not just for tourists. Philadelphia’s population has fallen two years in a row, interrupting decades of growth; last year’s 22,000-person decline was the biggest drop since the 1970s. Despite what we might have imagined in 2020, there has been no triumphant moment of reopening from the pandemic. The city entered a tunnel and came out different on the other side. There are worse conditions on public transit. There are fewer businesses and, still, less foot traffic downtown . People are fretting about crime. Even some of the positive changes born from COVID — restaurants ending the reign of parking spots and giving us outdoor dining, say — have been shut down by buzzkill bureaucrats in City Hall. Tourists have started to return, but at lower levels than before. Last year, Center City hotels were a little over half full, at 57 percent occupancy, compared to 76 percent before the pandemic.

All of which is to say that when Angela Val, Visit Philly’s CEO, ascended to the top job in June of last year, the external circumstances were far from ideal. The internal ones weren’t much better. Visit Philly gets most of its funding from a hotel tax, and because the hotels were barren, its revenue stream had been shut off. The staff was down to just 26 people — half the total from three years before. And the reason the job was open in the first place was because the prior CEO, Jeff Guaracino , had just died of cancer at 48, only three years after he replaced Meryl Levitz, Visit Philly’s founding CEO, who had run the organization for its first two decades. “It was a recipe for disaster,” Val says.

When you think about important institutions in the city, Visit Philadelphia probably isn’t top of mind. How meaningful is tourism marketing, really? Well, consider that Val is one of the faces of a city hospitality industry that employs some 74,000 people and whose visitors spend north of $6 billion a year. “The overall impact she has on the city’s budget is enormous,” says Julie Coker, the former CEO of the Convention and Visitors Bureau . “Her influence around how Philadelphia looks and behaves is enormous.”

Val is an extremely rare breed: a marketing executive who hardly talks about marketing. Like many advertising people, she’s extremely bubbly; unlike many advertising people, she doesn’t speak in foggy, meaningless buzzwords. Her response to the pandemic has been to completely reconsider what it means to do her job. She’s increasingly preoccupied with concrete matters: trash cans, public safety, public transit, and, more literally, the condition of city sidewalks. “I spend most of my time now dealing more with what I would say are city-related and community-related issues,” she says. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think Val was a policy wonk in the Mayor’s Office. “Our job now is the city,” she says. “We don’t own any restaurants, we own no shops, we own no hotels, no festivals, nothing. We market what other people own and run. So we have to be involved at a foundational level with the city.” Levitz, who hired Val as her assistant 25 years ago, describes her current task as nothing less than “developing a post-pandemic Philadelphia.”

To sell the city, one needs to understand it, and for Val, one of her reliable methods of study is walking. One of the advantages of walking is that it’s the best way to experience the city’s unvarnished indignities — the crap we’ve grown to accept only because we encounter it every day, like sidewalks so uneven they’re practically topographical features, or the city’s peculiar allergy to scaffolding, which forces pedestrians to cross streets to avoid construction, advancing through the city as if on a checkerboard. Val lives in Point Breeze and hasn’t driven a car in over a decade. As she strolls to various appointments, she’s constantly looking around and asking herself questions: The trash cans — are they overflowing? The businesses — do they have clean facades? Her fellow pedestrians — are there any?

Val, who’s 51, goes through the same process when she’s on a trip for pleasure. She and her husband, Joe, a construction project manager, have a pet Mi-Ki named George Costanza but no human children, which frees them up to travel regularly. “We try to go away every 90 to 100 days,” she says. They keep a bucket list: Sri Lanka, the Seychelles, Germany, Morocco. It can be difficult for Val to turn off her tourism brain. In Madrid, she noticed the way trash trucks were small enough to fit down historic city streets. In Tokyo, she paid attention to how employees in stores wore name tags stating what languages they spoke. Everywhere she goes, she thinks about transit. “I’m always very interested in how traffic patterns work in other cities that have a large population,” she says, laughing self-consciously at having alighted on the irony: Can a person whose job is thinking about vacation ever truly be on vacation?

On a Tuesday in early April, Val meets me at Dilworth Park at 5 p.m. It’s one of those life-affirming days: warm weather, sunshine into the evening, the first signs of spring. Kids are playing in the fountains against the backdrop of City Hall. People sit under umbrellas at cafe tables. Security guards and cleaning staff from the Center City District roam in their teal jackets. The ground is immaculately clean. A group of teens with mountain bikes mills about in a corner of the park. One of them, wearing a balaclava, is arguing with a security guard about something, yelling, “You’re not my dad! Don’t tell me what to do!” The guard replies, “You’re going to go far in life with that attitude.” It’s a perfect Philly tableau.

The idea for our meeting is that Val will walk me through the city, offering her usual sort of analysis. She arrives wearing a black blouse, jeans and New Balance sneakers, sunglasses perched on her head, her curly brown hair down to her shoulders. She’s chosen to have us venture down Market Street from City Hall to Old City, a stretch any tourist might traverse between the two destinations and also among the most heavily scrutinized areas in the city right now, thanks to the 76ers, who want to build their new arena there. (Val says she’s on the fence about the concept.)

It doesn’t take long for the various challenges facing Center City to reveal themselves. Over the sound of growling engines from a pair of dirt bikes mid-wheelie, Val points out the Market Street National Bank building to the east of City Hall, with its elegant pilasters and baby blue detailing. On the ground floor is a Marriott hotel, tourists scurrying in and out. On either side is a row of retail. A 7-Eleven — closed. A Subway — closed. Any sense of charm: nonexistent. “One, you could probably get away with,” Val says of the closures. “Four of them, next to each other, to tourists entering that hotel? That to me looks like a problem.” (Nearly 20 percent of Center City storefronts were still empty as of last September, compared to the 2019 figure of 11 percent.)

Val has set the ambitious if slightly nebulous goal of making Philadelphia the most welcoming city in the country. Having vacancies here, in the heart of Center City, in what should be some of the most valuable retail property in the downtown, doesn’t scream welcoming. Nor does the derelict SEPTA station entrance a few blocks east with shattered glass all along the sides and trash scattered on its roof, which, Val recently realized with horror, is visible to tourists from their vantage point on double-decker bus tours. The abandoned stretch of retail in what was once the historic Robinson department store at 10th and Market and is now covered up by a 15-foot-tall black box running nearly half a city block? That’s not so welcoming, either. A teenager walking by us spits on the sidewalk right in front of another woman, eliciting an incredulous “What the fuck!”

“It looks depressing, right?” Val says of the stretch. “And if it was a little bit darker, and a little bit colder and dreary … it looks like something bad could happen.” According to the Center City District, foot traffic is at 77 percent of pre-pandemic levels for visitors, though when you count only office workers along the stretch of Market Street west of Broad that’s been decimated by remote work, the figure becomes a much more dire 47 percent.

“Our job now is the city. We don’t own any restaurants; we own no shops. We market what other people own and run, so we have to be involved at a foundational level with the city.” — Angela Val

On the plus side, the number of residents in Center City is actually growing, and much of the foot traffic and storefront vacancy data is trending in the right direction. And for all the conversation about crime, Center City is as safe as it’s ever been . (There are some sensational episodes, like the group of kids who in February beat up a woman and knocked her unconscious at 7 p.m. outside of her hotel at 15th and Chestnut, but they remain the exception.)

Still, it can be difficult to keep those positive trends in mind, because despite what some of the data shows, the truth is that it doesn’t feel good in parts of Center City right now. There are signs of struggle everywhere: in the people panhandling and sleeping on the sidewalk, in the ghostly storefronts and quiet streets. It can seem like there’s a kind of urban doom loop playing out in miniature on this stretch of blocks: businesses closing, residents avoiding, leading to more closures, providing ever less reason to walk around. “Maybe the cops have decided to move to another block, because who’s going to come past here?” Val says. But she feels it’s exactly during these moments when “nobody’s paying attention” that the city should be taking the most action.

What can a tourism marketing agency do about any of this? Val has no shortage of ideas, large and small. She’s currently working with the Chamber of Commerce on developing a trash pickup and street beautification program — “not a conversation we would ever normally have with the Chamber.” She’s joined the board of the Center City District, a first for a Visit Philly CEO, because she wants to “have a say in what it is that they’re working on.” She invited SEPTA general manager Leslie Richards onto her board, because she knows that many of Philadelphia’s tourists come from other parts of the world “where public transportation is a big thing done really well,” which means she needs to be in the know about what’s going on with transit here. She’s thinking more about lobbying and ways she can influence legislation in City Council to help the city. She wants to place a giant banner reading WELCOME TO THE HISTORIC DISTRICT on one of the buildings across the street from Independence Hall, because if you’re a sightseeing tourist, it’s nice to have an indicator that, yes, you’re walking in the right direction. She’s working with the airport on a program to spruce up the baggage-claim area, because it’s one of the first things you see when landing in the city.

“I don’t think my hands are tied,” Val says. Far from sitting back and hoping the city’s course corrects itself, she says, Visit Philly has to “be more vocal and part of the solution than we ever have.” Ultimately, tourists and residents care about the same things: “It’s our basic needs that we’re out there advocating for, no different than the neighbor down the street.”

If you’re a resident of Philadelphia and don’t know a whole lot about Visit Philly, don’t feel bad. You aren’t exactly its audience. Still, you’ve likely encountered the organization , even if you didn’t realize it. If you’ve ever been bored on a Saturday afternoon, searching for things to do in town, you’ve probably ended up on the events website Uwishunu. That’s Visit Philly. (Conceived as a tourist resource, it often gets more traffic from residents.) You may have heard some of its marketing campaigns, like the “Get Your History Straight and Your Nightlife Gay” one of 2003, which was the first advertising explicitly focused on the LGBTQ community run by any city-marketing organization in the country and generated plenty of stories about itself — the advertiser’s holy grail.

Despite what now looks like abundant success, the creation of Visit Philadelphia in 1996 — initially under the uniquely unmarketable name of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism and Marketing Corporation — wasn’t a source of happiness for much of the city’s hospitality industry. Before Visit Philly, the Conv ention and Visitors Bureau handled marketing the city to tourists and business travelers alike, the same way it’s done in the vast majority of other cities. But then-mayor Ed Rendell thought the city would be better served by having its own marketing entity, and he worked with Levitz, a former CVB employee, to initiate a divorce, thereby pissing off the CVB. “There was no aspiration and no belief,” Levitz says of Philly tourism at the time. “The Liberty Bell was a drive-by. You did the cheesesteak and went on to D.C. or New York.”

This was the state of affairs when Val got to the city in the 1990s. She grew up in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, the oldest of three kids, her mother a teacher and her dad a principal. By her own admission, she was “never really great at school.” What she was good at was working, which is how she found herself at Drexel, attending hospitality school, where she figured the working part of the degree was surely more important than the books. There was a touch of romance to the decision, too: As a kid, Val would watch the TV show Hotel , starring Shari Belafonte, and think how glamorous it would be to manage a hotel, living there, having dinner at its restaurant every night.

In Philly, though, it turned out there was a problem: Hardly any hotel jobs were available. Her first summer, Val ended up at a Holiday Inn in Georgetown. Later, she managed to find a local gig, at the Embassy Suites near the Parkway. It wasn’t quite the Carlyle, but that hotel, Val says, “is where I think I first understood how this industry starts to broaden.” She worked the front desk and saw the way conventions impacted the rest of the economy: They drew throngs of guests to the hotel, who then asked her for recommendations on where to shop, eat and drink.

After graduating in 1994, Val went back to work at the Embassy Suites. Four years later, she got hired at Visit Philly, working double duty at the front desk and as Levitz’s assistant. At the time, the organization, which tasked itself with marketing not just Philadelphia but the entire five-county region, was in a trial period, having been granted temporary funding and seeking to prove its worth to justify permanent support. “Meryl was up front with me: If we don’t get this funding, you won’t be here longer than a year,” Val says. But she was promised a few perks: severance, in the event of her firing. Plus, she’d get to keep her desk chair.

Val made a quick impression. “It took me about 11 seconds to say this is a really capable person who’s determined and who believes in the city and that hospitality and tourism could be an economic development agent,” Levitz recalls. Val, meanwhile, got an up-close look at the inner workings of our town. “I was lucky Meryl was one of those CEOs that let you in the room,” she says. “I didn’t talk. But when you don’t talk, you listen.”

Visit Philly ended up proving itself useful. According to one report — written, admittedly, by a hospitality marketing publication whose methods are opaque — one of its first ad campaigns, a $1.8 million expenditure titled “Philadelphia — the place that loves you back,” helped bring an additional one million visitors to the city, who then spent a total of $97 million. (Quantifying the impact of advertising has long been one of the sticking points between Visit Philly and the CVB, which uses a much more direct formula: number of conventions booked, resulting in a specific number of attendees and hotel nights.) Hindsight offers another way to judge: In 1997, Center City hotels booked roughly 250,000 leisure-travel nights — a quarter of the current total. Levitz got the hotels in the city to agree to the tax that would help fund the organization going forward. Val got to keep her job. (These days, the hotel tax accounts for about 80 percent of Visit Philly’s $13 million budget.)

Angela Val got her start in the tourism industry working at a hotel. Today, as head of Visit Philly, she spends her time thinking of how to keep them full of guests.

One of the formative events in Val’s early career came in 2000, when the city played host to the Republican National Convention — one of the first large-scale national events to come to Philly in years. At the time, the Convention Center could hold more people than all the city’s hotels combined. That wasn’t a great look for a wannabe world-class city, so in 1997, the Rendell administration kicked off an ambitious hotel-building campaign : 2,000 rooms by 2000. A series of hotel propagations and migrations ensued: the Loews taking over the historic PSFS Bank building on Market Street, the Ritz-Carlton moving from 17th and Chestnut to Broad Street.

These were significant changes at a time when, as Val puts it, “The city didn’t look that great. You look back at Rittenhouse Square — I mean, I’d be afraid of walking through it, honestly.” Avoiding national embarrassment, it turned out, proved good motivation for cleaning up the city. The convention went well, and for Val, it offered another point supporting her theory about the direct relation between major events and civic improvement. The RNC would be long gone, but all those new hotels would be sticking around — and now, they’d need someone to help market them.

Much of that responsibility fell to Val, who for a few years after the RNC ran Visit Philly’s hotel program, coming up with packages — free parking, museum discounts — to entice visitors to stay overnight. She spent the next decade working on special projects, like helping to coordinate a Philly pop-up at Austin’s SXSW festival.

In 2016, another convention opportunity came up: This time, the Democrats wanted to come to town. Val was tapped to be the second-in-charge of the host committee, handling a $10 million budget and organizing activities for the special kind of people who get excited about attending political conventions. There was a festival at the Convention Center that included a replica of the Oval Office and fuselage from Air Force One, and a scavenger hunt where people downloaded an app prompting them to find 57 painted fiberglass donkeys scattered throughout the city. (The app, it turned out, was owned by Jesse Rendell, son of DNC host committee chair Ed, prompting questions of nepotism. “Donkey Deal Smells Fishy,” read the Inquirer headline.)

By this point, Philly was far from the city that had been described by travelers, according to a 1996 survey by Visit Philly, as “lacking excitement and adventure; somewhat boring.” It was no longer the city that, when it bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics in the mid-aughts, received feedback from the International Olympic Committee saying, as Val recalls it, “Nobody knows where Philadelphia is or what it is, so we can’t have it there.” After the DNC, the NFL draft was held on the Parkway. There were new hotels cropping up not just in Center City, but in Fishtown. The city had momentum — kinetic energy all around. “We were feeling ourselves,” Val says. “The trajectory was like this.” She lifts her arm into the air and points straight up .

The pandemic turned back the clock at least 20 years. The number of domestic visitors fell from 44 million in 2019 to 30 million in 2020 — the fewest since 2002. Visitor spending contracted by nearly half, from $7.6 billion to $4.13 billion. Those stats might be underselling the extent of the catastrophe. Suddenly, Philadelphia was once again confronting challenges with basic city services — cleanliness, public safety. “We are a little bit back to where we were in the beginning of the ’80s or the ’90s, where you’re worried about some of those same issues,” Val says.

She’s now coming at these challenges from a different angle. After the DNC, she moved from Visit Philly to the CVB, wanting to get more experience beyond tourism. In the slightly petty world of Philly hospitality, this qualified as a fraught move. “People were shocked, and I do think Meryl was unhappy about that,” Val says. (Levitz, for her part, pooh-poohs that notion: “I know people like to construct all kinds of drama around stuff, but I’m not into it.”)

In late 2020, Sue Jacobson, then the chair of the Chamber of Commerce board, approached Val with a proposition. She was starting an initiative called “Ready. Set. Philly!,” a Chamber-and-city-sponsored program to help businesses prepare for reopening. Figuring that Val wasn’t too busy at the CVB since there were no conventions to speak of, Jacobson asked her to be its part-time executive director. Val wound up coordinating monthly meetings with CEOs from the city’s major companies and employers — meetings that had never taken place before, according to Jacobson.

This kind of leadership role was new to Val. For her entire career, she’d been the second-in-charge, and she’d begun to feel like that was where she belonged. There was a reason for this, one that Val has shared with very few people: She’s dyslexic. “I read differently, slower than other people,” she says. Her learning disability was why she decided to go to hospitality school in the first place, figuring that if she flunked out, she’d at least be able to get a job in the industry. Once she began working, it felt natural to avoid the spotlight, sticking to jobs where she could remain obscure. “It’s easier to hide some of those issues,” she says. “Being the number one, there is no place to hide.” When Levitz revealed she’d be retiring in 2018 and announced a search for her successor at Visit Philly, Val didn’t even apply for the job. “I talked myself out of it,” she says. “I was just afraid. And I didn’t feel ready.”

The Ready. Set. Philly! job started to change how Val felt about herself. Then, in 2021, another opportunity came up: The CVB’s CEO, Julie Coker, who had recruited her, was leaving to take a different job in San Diego. Val, who at the time was the chief administrative officer, applied for her position, thinking she had a good shot. She didn’t get it.

“It was devastating,” she says. Val resolved that her next job was “going to be the one I stay at until I retire” and took a private-sector gig for a hospitality marketing company. She thought opportunity had passed her by, both at the CVB and at Visit Philly, where Guaracino, who was about Val’s same age, had just taken over. But after his unexpected death, the organization found itself searching for a CEO again. This time, Val applied and was offered the position.

By now, the job was no longer about maintaining Philly on its slingshot trajectory. Instead, Val would essentially be starting over from scratch. She wanted certain assurances. As the organization’s first Black CEO, she didn’t want to be the longtime insider brought in during the crisis, a short-term leader whose fate was to be replaced. “Are they just going to have me clean it up and then they’re going to kick me out?” she wondered. She had no interest in that, and she asked the Visit Philly board that question directly. “They assured me no,” she says.

It’s hard to find anyone who wasn’t thrilled with Val’s appointment as CEO. She’s worked for all the various factions of the local hospitality industry — Levitz jokingly refers to them as the five families — from Visit Philly to the CVB to the hotels. “I don’t think there are too many other people who are able to see the whole in the same way that she can,” Levitz says.

That experience and general popularity seem to have already helped Val alleviate some long-standing civic distrust. Tiffany Newmuis, who worked with her at the DNC, says she’d never seen the Visit Philly and CVB chief executives stand next to each other and jointly present at any of the city’s state-of-the-tourism-economy meetings — not until Val got to Visit Philly. This year, Visit Philly and the CVB announced they’re working on a joint marketing campaign for the first time in their history.

“To me, Angela represents the new Philadelphia, the smart Philadelphia, the Philadelphia that’s going to move forward in the future,” says Jack Ferguson, another former CEO of the CVB. Ed Grose, head of the hotel association, describes her as a “quintessential hospitality success story.” Jacobson puts it simply: “It’s her time. She should’ve been leading things a long time ago.”

A few hours before our walk down Market Street, Val has a meeting at a Center City law office with a Pittsburgh entrepreneur whose company specializes in “augmented reality.” Val wants to learn whether it could play a role in the next large event coming to Philadelphia, one that could well be the springboard to a new era of post-pandemic growth: the 2026 World Cup.

The entrepreneur, a bald guy with thick art-director glasses who’s brought everyone socks featuring his face on them, begins his presentation, showing an example on a TV screen. You scan a QR code on your phone, and up pops a pre-recorded clip of someone talking to you. The technology is a little janky — not that augmented, not that realistic — and the challenges are fairly obvious: Do tourists really want to stop and watch a 60-second video in the middle of the city? Will they even be able to hear it? What to do about all the different languages World Cup fans speak?

Still, Val and the local World Cup committee reps at the meeting see some potential, musing that maybe visitors arriving at the airport could scan a QR code and be welcomed by a famous Philadelphian, or one of the soccer players from their country. Maybe there could be scannable codes at bus stations throughout town, featuring recordings telling people what sights and restaurants are nearby. Val and the entrepreneur agree to try a pilot program later this year at a small local event.

While the World Cup will unquestionably be the most globally significant event in Philadelphia in 2026, it’s far from the only blockbuster. There’s also the Semiquincentennial , celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States.

Val has been spending a lot of time thinking about what, exactly, the city will offer people over the course of the year. She’s hoping to meet with a museum, for instance, to see if it might want to put on an exhibit about 1619, the year the first enslaved Africans were brought to the shores of the United States. “I don’t want 2026 to just be about powdered wigs,” Val says. “We’re also going to be playing the world’s game in Philadelphia, in the place where America started.” She wants to get tourists to venture beyond the downtown, to places like Germantown and FDR Park, recognizing that “travelers are demanding a more authentic experience, and growth in the travel industry is going to come from diverse markets. They want to see themselves in the neighborhood.” To achieve that, though, those neighborhoods need to both expect and want tourists, not to mention have the infrastructure, like transit, to support them. “We have to get those neighborhoods ready,” Val says.

One way to think about her efforts around 2026 is that she isn’t just waiting to advertise whatever the planners come up with; increasingly, she is one of the planners. It’s a fitting role, considering she’s had a hand in virtually every one of the city’s major events over the past 20 years. “Angela has seen so many evolutions of the city, so she’s not a blind optimist,” says Newmuis. “She’s absolutely seen the city at the worst, and from that, she’s really skilled at picking out what the city needs.”

Near the end of our walk down Market Street, in front of the Hotel Monaco by Independence Hall, something catches Val’s eye in the middle of the sidewalk. “Oh, look — a penny!” she says, stooping over to pick it up. “Then I make a wish! I keep a whole jar — all the wishes.” She grasps the penny tightly in her hand and shuts her eyes.

For a moment, this looks a little like blind optimism. But maybe it’s not. This is the year the number of visitors to our city is expected to reach pre-pandemic levels , and it would be easy for Val to pretend everything is back to normal. That’s not what she does, though. “I’m hoping that by the end of 2023, we feel a little bit on stronger footing, and that the people of Philly feel better. Because right now, I don’t think we feel good, right? We still feel a little anxious.” She’s talking about a generalized anxiety — something at the psychological level, a citywide sense. Val goes on: “I think we’ve all been walking around looking behind our backs so long that we just don’t feel good. And I want to get us back there.” This isn’t your standard sales pitch, which is maybe why it’s tempting to buy what she’s selling.

Published as “Tourist-in-Chief?” in the June 2023 issue of Philadelphia magazine.

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Visit Philadelphia® Commits $2 Million For Summer Marketing

Funding aims to reignite region’s leisure tourism & hospitality industry.

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New research shows that as more Americans are vaccinated, they’re beginning to spend money on travel. Eyeing an unprecedented opportunity to help reignite the region’s tourism economy, VISIT PHILADELPHIA today announced a $2 million investment in its summer tourism marketing campaign to attract leisure travelers back to Greater Philadelphia. More details on the campaign will be announced at a later date.

The regional tourism marketing organization noted that it is increasing its marketing investment to defend Greater Philadelphia’s tourism market share from competitive destinations that are launching their own summer campaigns. Tourists will have vast travel options this summer as cities, beaches, resorts, cruises and theme parks all begin to reopen.

“People are planning and booking their summer trips now, and Greater Philadelphia has the variety of experiences they’re looking for,” said Jeff Guaracino, president and CEO, VISIT PHILADELPHIA. “In order for our region to compete, we have to act now as time is of the essence. Our $2 million investment is a start that will give us a nice competitive advantage, but more funding is necessary, and we will continue to seek additional money to sustain these critical marketing efforts.”

Mayor Jim Kenney, a member of VISIT PHILADELPHIA’s board of directors, added “The City is preparing to safely welcome back visitors and working hard to restore the jobs and tax revenue that the hospitality industry generates for Philadelphia each year. Investing in a tourism marketing campaign will position Philadelphia to bring tourists back to our city this summer, and the money they spend at our restaurants, hotels, shops and attractions will stimulate Philadelphia’s economy.”

Tourism and hospitality was one of the largest industries in Greater Philadelphia pre-COVID-19, and it’s critical to the region’s economic recovery. Visitor spending boosts Philadelphia’s diverse small businesses, restaurants and attractions while generating tax revenue ($1.01 billion in 2019). The industry also supports more than 185,000 leisure and hospitality jobs across the region. By investing in summer tourism marketing, VISIT PHILADELPHIA is investing in the recovery of the Philadelphia community.

VISIT PHILADELPHIA ® is our name and our mission. As the region’s official tourism marketing agency, we build Greater Philadelphia’s image, drive visitation and boost the economy.

On Greater Philadelphia’s official visitor website and blog, visitphilly.com and uwishunu.com, visitors can explore things to do, upcoming events, themed itineraries and hotel packages. Compelling photography and videos, interactive maps and detailed visitor information make the sites effective trip-planning tools. Along with Visit Philly social media channels, the online platforms communicate directly with consumers. Travelers can also call the Independence Visitor Center for additional information. 599 Market Street, (800) 537-7676