Light City Brought 442,500 Visitors, $33 Million To Baltimore
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- 2018 was the third year Baltimore hosted the Light City Festival, and this year's event was billed as "More Love. More Lights." Well, they can now add more money to that title.
The Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts announced the results of research firm Forward Analytics' study, which found that this year's Light City festival brought an estimated 442,500 nighttime visitors to the Inner Harbor and a total economic impact of $33.50 million.
Those who visited the festival reportedly generated $19.72 million in "direct spending," along with another $13.78 million in "indirect impact."
"We were thrilled with the results of the economic impact report that were released today," said Kathy Hornig, with the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts.
Besides hard cash, Light City also generated a lot of free publicity for Baltimore.
"More than 1 billion positive media impressions for the city of Baltimore that went viral," Hornig added. "They took selfies. They posted on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. We couldn't be happier."
Of the 442,500 estimated visitors, 173,000 were from Baltimore and 101,330 lived in the Baltimore Metro area.
The study also showed that 86,730 visitors came from out-of-state, with visitors reportedly coming from 19 other states. The majority of out-of-state visitors came from Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, Virginia, New Jersey and New York.
Click here to view the full report on Light City's economic impact.
Early planning is already underway for Light City 2019.
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