Visitor Spending

As described in the Understand section (see My Airport Is Not an Island), one of the ways in which airports support economic activity is by giving visitors from outside a region access to local hospitality industries. Airports extend the market reach of hospitality industries across long-distances. While visiting, travelers will spend money on hotels or other lodging, food and beverages, off-airport transportation, entertainment and recreation, and retail goods.

The following sequence of steps can be used to estimate the amount of business activity directly supported in your region by visitor spending:

  • Calculate the number of visitors that annually arrive to your region via the airport. This calculation differs for commercial service and general aviation operations.
  • Estimate the average spending per passenger, by spending category, and by visitor type. Spending estimates can be based on surveys or published data sources for your region.
  • Adjust retail sales to account for the local portion, only.
  • Estimate the number of jobs and amount of wages supported by visitor spending, by industry, based on industry-specific data.

Each of these steps, along with sources for relevant information, are described in detail in “Estimating Economic Activity Supported by Visitor Spending” in the “Tools” section. Also in the “Tools” section are sample visitors surveys used for collecting data from general aviation and commercial service travelers.

While the “Tools” section provides comprehensive guidance for the entire sequence of steps outlined above, there are a couple of options available for simplified analyses. First, existing economic impact studies can be used to develop high-level estimates of per-visitor spending. The amount spent by each visitor will of course depend on the types of activities he or she chooses to engage in, as well as on the cost of goods and services in your region. ACI-NA maintains a catalogue of Airport Economic Impact Studies. Values from an existing study of your state or a region similar to your own can serve as reasonable approximations of per-visitor spending for your airport. Second, you may wish to stop once you’ve estimated local spending supported by visitors to your airport. However, to report dollars that truly stay local to your economy (as opposed to dollars that ultimately end up in locations across the globe where retail goods were produced), it is necessary to perform the adjustment to retail sales (step 3 above).

Resources

  • ACRP Report 132 The Role of U.S. Airports in the National Economy

    Chapter 4, National Economic Impact of Airports in the NPIAS has a section addressing the value of international visitor spending to the U.S. economy.

  • ACRP Report 26 Guidebook for Conducting Airport User Surveys

    Chapter 5, Air Passenger Surveys provides good methodology to create air passenger surveys as they require careful attention to survey methodology and development of an effective sampling plan and questionnaire.

  • NBAA Airport Advocate Guide

    Page 8, Economic Impact Data provides a simple discussion of economic impact data, where to find it and how to research it yourself. Note that the use of the terms “indirect” and “induced” in this guide differs from our use of the terms throughout this toolkit (refer to the Anatomy of an Impact Study for more information on this issue). Additionally, readers may be aware that the calculations outlined for visitor spending impacts are intended to produce “back-of-the-envelope” estimates, only.

Tools