https://www.bizjournals.com/chicago/...-for-2017.html
Illinois notched record visitor counts for 2017
By Lewis Lazare
– Reporter, Chicago Business Journal
May 15, 2018, 2:29pm
Illinois welcomed a record 114 million visitors to the state in 2017, the Illinois Office of Tourism said today.
The record number of visitors spent $39.5 billion in Illinois last year, a 3 percent (or $1.1 billion) increase year over year.
The 114 million visitor count last year also is 3 percent higher than the total was in 2016, which was also a record.
Interestingly, the 2017 state visitor count includes both business and leisure travelers. In Illinois the leisure count represented a whopping 83 percent of total visitors last year, while business travelers accounted for 17 percent of the total. As has been pointed out repeatedly, business is hurting in Illinois for a variety of reasons, not the least of them the state’s financial quagmire.
Visitor expenditures for goods and services generated $2.95 billion in state
...