Tourism is a $9.2 billion industry in Arkansas, and more than 48 million people visited the state last year, according to a report shared Monday by the governor and the state Department of Parks, Heritage & Tourism.
The study, commissioned by the department and conducted by Tourism Economics of Philadelphia, said the number of Arkansas visitors in 2022 rose by 15% from the previous year, and that they spent an additional $1.2 billion over 2021.
MORE: See the data from the report here.
“We can, with great confidence, say that Arkansas’ tourism industry has fully recovered — and then some — from setbacks of the COVID pandemic,” Shea Lewis, secretary of the state Department of Parks, Heritage & Tourism, said in a news release accompanying the report.
Lewis and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced results of the study during a news conference Monday morning at the Old Statehouse Museum in Little Rock. They also announced a new tourism director, Dalaney Thomas.
The report said the highest spend categories for visitors last year were in transportation, food and lodging. Lodging accounted for the largest increase in overall spending, up 23% from 2021. Lewis said the lodging receipts are particularly important because lodging generates the bulk of Arkansas’ 2% Tourism Reinvestment Tax revenue.
“Those dollars are almost entirely paid by out-of-state visitors and [are] used to fund our very successful marketing efforts,” he said.
Proceeds from the 2% tax collections increased by almost 16% to $24.3 million in 2022.
Overall, Arkansas collected $752 million in taxes from visitors, a 15.2% increase. Of the total, $536 million were for state taxes; the remaining $216 million went into local coffers.
The report said the state tourism industry supported 68,098 jobs, up 6% from 2021, earning $2.1 billion. It said tourism supports 3.9% of all jobs in Arkansas.
The report also put Arkansas tourism’s “indirect and induced impact” at $6.5 billion. The report defines indirect impact as the amount of goods and services purchased by industry operators. It said induced impact is the amount tourism industry employees spend from their wages in the local economy.
“When all is considered, tourism’s impact on Arkansas’ economy was $15.7 billion in 2022, its total employment was 97,839 jobs and state and local taxes exceeded $1 billion,” the department said.
Sign up for Daily E-news
