Independence Visitor Center generates $72M a year in additional spending on tickets and more across the region, new report says

During the Independence Visitor Center’s first two decades, on average 2.11 million people a year stopped in.

Some tourists coming to Philly over the Memorial Day weekend will plan everything online. Plenty of others still want advice in-person.

“You would be amazed at how many people come in here and say, I’m here for the next three days, what should I do?’ ” said James Cuorato, president and CEO of the nonprofit Independence Visitor Center Corporation (IVCC), which operates the center, at Sixth and Market Streets, on Philadelphia’s Independence Mall.

As the IVCC continues to recover from the pandemic, along with the rest of the travel and tourism industry, the nonprofit is taking stock of its economic impact over the past 20 years.

A new report finds that from 2002 through 2021, visitors spent an additional $72 million per year in the region, on average, because of their stop at the center. During the past 20 years, that additional spending came to $1.43 billion in total, according to the analysis by Econsult Solutions Inc.

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“For a lot of people, we’re their first impression of Philadelphia,” Cuorato said. Visitors to the center “want to hear about the hidden gems in the city that maybe don’t get a lot of attention, and want to get recommendations from someone who knows the city.”

Staff at the visitor center will offer restaurant and hotel suggestions to tourists, in addition to selling tickets to more than 100 attractions, events, and destinations. The IVCC also manages the Philly Phlash Downtown Loop transit service that runs between Penn’s Landing and Philadelphia Museum of Art for $2 a ride, or $5 for a day pass.

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“People can buy tickets to the Franklin Institute from their mobile device, and head right to the Franklin Institute,” said Jennifer Nagle, IVCC’s executive vice president. “But we also know there’s a strong and large audience that is not preplanned” and is not purchasing tickets online.

That crowd wants to “tiptoe into their experience,” Nagle said, “and they’re going to start at the visitor center.”

The IVCC has an operating budget of around $4 million per year, said Cuorato, and the nonprofit raises about 80% of its own funding through its gift shop, ticket sales, and event space rental. The center also gets up to $850,000 a year from the National Park Service.

The visitor center’s impact in the regional economy “is estimated to be $116 million to $233 million” per year, the Econsult report found, “supporting 1,100 to 2,200 jobs with $35 million to $71 million in earnings, and $8 million to $16 million in state and local tax revenue.”

For the full 20 years covered in the report, the IVCC’s regional economic impact is estimated between $2.33 billion and $4.66 billion.

The analysis factors in visitor attendance from 2020 and 2021, years when “tourism volume and spending was greatly suppressed” because of the effects of COVID-19, the report notes.

Visitor center attendance averaged about 2.5 million people per year from 2015 to 2019.

Then, in 2020, when the visitor center was closed for more than 200 days, attendance plummeted to 273,000 people. By the end of 2021, it had climbed back to 768,000.

This year is looking better: 235,000 visitors came by the center between January and April, nearly double the amount from the same period last year.

Cuorato expects the visitor center to be back at pre-pandemic attendance levels by 2023, in line with tourism industry estimates.

“The weekdays are still a bit on the slow side, but the weekends have been great,” he said. “I think we’re poised for a really, really strong summer.”