Report: Visitors to Mobile spent a record $1.5 billion in 2021

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - 2021 was a big year for tourism on the Gulf Coast with nearly 30 million people visiting Sweet Home Alabama.

That number comes from a new state tourism report out this week that shows despite COVID keeping travel down, Alabama was a busy destination.

The economic impact report says 28.2 million visitors came to Alabama in 2021 with nearly 3.3 million of those visiting Mobile alone.

Last year, visitors to Mobile spent an all-time record amount of money, $1.5 billion in our restaurants, hotels, attractions, shops, and gas stations.

The annual report says this represents a 36% increase over 2020 and a $200 million increase over any previous record year.

That means lots of people are visiting Mobile and spending some serious cash to enjoy all that the area has to offer.

“Our visitors are actually spending more money here last year per visitor, there’s a lot of reasons why,” said President & CEO of Visit Mobile David Clark. “I think the quality of Mobile continues to increase, I think stimulus money helped, I think pent-up travel helped, but I think people are realizing how cool Mobile is.”

Visit Mobile says that travel and tourism continue to be big for the Port City.

Currently, the industry employs over 20,000 people in hotels, restaurants and attractions.

Mobile was among the top five most visited counties in the state.

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