South suburban tourism officials will open the region’s doors to a national audience as Visit Chicago Southland hosts its first post-pandemic showcase in May in Orland Park.
The 2024 National Tourism Day Celebration and Hospitality Showcase will be held May 23 at the Orland Park Civic Center, 14750 S Ravinia Ave.
The showcase will include more than 50 area vendors including hotels, restaurants, attractions, entertainment venues, sports teams, caterers, casinos, breweries and more.
Chris Craven, Visit Chicago Southland business development manager, said the showcase is a way to connect business leaders within the tourism industry and engage with those outside the industry.
“It’s the who’s who of the marketplace,” Craven said.
And Visit Chicago Southland said the region offers plenty of attractions to show off.
Covering an area from Midway Airport to Peotone and from New Lenox to the Indiana border, the Southland offers many affordable hotels, state parks, theaters, golf courses, venues, baseball fields, breweries and vineyards, said Visit Chicago Southland CEO/President Jim Garrett.
And it’s only going to get better with the opening this summer of the Wind Creek Casino in East Hazel Crest, Garrett said.
“We have just a multiplicity of various things that we feel are attractive,” Garrett said. “We just try to elevate the value of those elements to encourage people to come in.”
Visit Chicago Southland touts the region’s attractions with tourism information placed at Chicago hotels and Midway Airport as well as at its information center at the Chicago Southland Lincoln Oasis, he said.
Garrett said the agency works with Chicago businesses and officials, and city and suburban agencies work together to encourage tourism in Chicago and in the south and southwest suburbs.
“We don’t compete with Chicago. We complement Chicago, they complement us,” Garrett said.
Over the last five years, tourism in Illinois fluctuated amid the COVID-19 pandemic but is bouncing back, according to Visit Chicago Southland data.
In 2019, over 120 million people visited the state, up from 117 million in 2018, and spent $43.1 billion compared to $41.7 billion in 2018. State and local tax revenue reached $2.5 billion and the state generated $296 million in hotel and motel tax in 2019, according to the data.
Tourism halved amid the onset of the pandemic in 2020, when some 67 million people visited the state and spent $23.3 billion, while tax revenue reached $2.6 billion and the state generated $249 million in hotel and motel tax.
Numbers have rebounded in the years since, and in 2022 over 111.3 million people visited the state and spent $44.3 billion, according to the data. State and local tax revenue reached $6.2 billion and the state generated $271 million in hotel and motel tax.
Garrett said the agency and its board of directors reviews the data when it becomes available to gauge how to continue reaching more people to visit the south and southwest suburbs.
“We’re always trying to figure out new ideas, new strategies to convert to business,” Garrett said.
akukulka@chicagotribune.com
