Tourism in Chicago draws on the city's architecture, museums, restaurants, sports, parks and beaches, theater and wide variety of neighborhood attractions. [1]
In 2017, Millennium Park alone saw 25 million visitors, making it the top tourist destination in the Midwest and among the top ten in the United States. [2]
In 2023, Chicago saw 51.96 million tourist arrivals, and tourism expenditure set a new record at $19.2 billion. [3] Of these, 1.83 million were international visitors.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, tourist arrivals had peaked at 61.58 million people in 2019.
Major conventions are held at McCormick Place. The historic Chicago Cultural Center (1897) serves as the city's Visitor Information Center. Tourists will find sites of interest in Grant Park which contains Millennium Park, Buckingham Fountain (1927), and the Art Institute of Chicago. Millennium Park's Cloud Gate sculpture and fountain's two towers incorporate LED facial images. Events such as the Grant Park Music Festival take place in the city. Chicago performing arts venues include the Harris Theater for Music and Dance and the Chicago Opera Theater.
Navy Pier, east of Streeterville, contains retail, restaurants, museums, exhibition halls and auditoriums. Its 15-story Ferris wheel is among the most visited landmarks with about 8 million visitors each year. [4]
The city's Museum Campus, holds: the Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum, the Field Museum of Natural History, and the Shedd Aquarium. The Museum Campus accesses the Art Institute of Chicago in Grant Park. The Museum of Science and Industry is also a leading attraction.
About one-third of Chicago's tourists enjoy the city's entertainment venues including McCormick Place and the Chicago Theatre.
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| Formation | 2012 |
|---|---|
| Type | Tourism organization |
| Headquarters | 301 E. Cermak Road Chicago, Illinois  United States |
Key people | Lynn Osmond, President & CEO |
| Website | www |
Formerly called | Chicago Convention & Tourism Bureau Chicago Office of Tourism and Culture |
Choose Chicago is the official tourism organization for the city. [5] In January 2012, Mayor Emanuel launched Chicago's new tourism organization, Choose Chicago. [6] The Mayor's vision was to restructure all tourism sales and marketing activities under a single, streamlined agency, and outline clear and measurable objectives to track these efforts. Choose Chicago partners with the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, the Chicago Office of Tourism, the City of Chicago, and the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity's Bureau of Tourism, as well as many other related associations in Chicago. It handles convention sales for McCormick Place and Navy Pier.
The former Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau was founded in 1970 with the merger of the Chicago Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Tourism Council of Greater Chicago. The Chicago North Shore Convention and Visitor's Bureau serves Evanston, Glenview, Northbrook and Skokie. The offices of the CNSCVB are located in downtown Skokie, Illinois. The Chicago Southland Convention & Visitors Bureau serves the 62 south and southwest suburbs of Chicago. Their office is in Lansing, Illinois.
Chicago is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 census, it is the third-most populous city in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. As the seat of Cook County, the second-most populous county in the U.S., Chicago is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area, often colloquially called "Chicagoland" and home to 9.6 million residents.
Grant Park is a large urban park in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois. Located within the city's central business district, the 319-acre (1.29 km2) park's features include Millennium Park, Buckingham Fountain, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum Campus.
Navy Pier is a 3,300-foot-long (1,010 m) pier on the shoreline of Lake Michigan, located in the Streeterville neighborhood of the Near North Side community area in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Navy Pier encompasses over 50 acres (20 ha) of shops, restaurants, live theaters, family attractions, parks, gardens, and exhibition facilities and is one of the top destinations in the Midwestern United States, drawing over nine million visitors annually. It is one of the most visited attractions in the entire Midwest and is Chicago's second-most visited tourist attraction.
McCormick Place is a convention center in Chicago. It is the largest convention center in North America. It consists of four interconnected buildings and one indoor arena sited on and near the shore of Lake Michigan, about 2 mi (3.2 km) south of the Chicago Loop. McCormick Place hosts numerous trade shows and meetings. The largest regular events are the Chicago Auto Show each February, the International Home and Housewares Show each March, the National Restaurant Association Annual Show each May, and the International Manufacturing Technology Show in the fall every other year.
Shedd Aquarium is an indoor public aquarium in Chicago. Opened on May 30, 1930, the 5 million US gal aquarium holds about 32,000 animals and is the third largest aquarium in the Western Hemisphere, after the Georgia Aquarium and Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Streeterville is a neighborhood in the Near North Side community area of Chicago, Illinois, United States, north of the Chicago River. It is bounded by the river on the south, the Magnificent Mile portion of Michigan Avenue on the west, and Lake Michigan on the north and east, according to most sources, although the city of Chicago recognizes only a small portion of this region as Streeterville. Thus, it can be described as the Magnificent Mile plus all land east of it. The tourist attraction of Navy Pier and Ohio Street Beach extend out into the lake from southern Streeterville. To the north, the East Lake Shore Drive District, where the Drive curves around the shoreline, may be considered an extension of the Gold Coast. The majority of the land in this neighborhood is reclaimed sandbar.
Millennium Park is a public park located in the Loop community area of Chicago, operated by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. The park, opened in July 2004, is a prominent civic center near the city's Lake Michigan shoreline that covers a 24.5-acre (9.9 ha) section of northwestern Grant Park. Featuring a variety of public art, outdoor spaces and venues, the park is bounded by Michigan Avenue, Randolph Street, Columbus Drive and East Monroe Drive. In 2017, Millennium Park was the top tourist destination in Chicago and in the Midwest, and placed among the top ten in the United States with 25 million annual visitors.
The Near South Side is a community area of Chicago, Illinois, United States, just south of the downtown central business district, the Loop. The Near South Side's boundaries are as follows: North—Roosevelt Road ; South—26th Street; West—Chicago River between Roosevelt and 18th Street, Clark Street between 18th Street and Cermak Road, Federal between Cermak Road and the Stevenson Expressway just south of 25th Street, and Clark Street again between the Stevenson and 26th Street; and East—Lake Michigan.
Museum Campus is a 57-acre (23 ha) park in Chicago along Lake Michigan. It encompasses five of the city's major attractions: the Adler Planetarium, America's first planetarium; the Shedd Aquarium; the Field Museum of Natural History; Soldier Field, home of the Chicago Bears of the National Football League; and the Lakeside Center of McCormick Place. Spanning from Roosevelt Road in the north to the terminus of the Stevenson Expressway at Lake Shore Drive in the south, the Museum Campus consists of the southeastern portion of Grant Park, the entirety of Northerly Island, and the northern portion of Burnham Park.
The Chicago Park District is one of the oldest and the largest park districts in the United States. As of 2016, there are over 600 parks included in the Chicago Park District as well as 27 beaches, 10 boat docking harbors, two botanic conservatories, a zoo, 11 museums, and one stadium. The Chicago Park District also has more than over 230 field houses, 78 public pools, and dozens of sports and recreational facilities, with year-round programming. It also owns and operates the lakefront stadium, Soldier Field, which the Chicago Bears and Chicago Fire FC lease. The district is an independent taxing authority as defined by Illinois State Statute and is considered a separate agency of the City of Chicago. The district's headquarters are located in the Brighton Park neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago.
SMG, formerly Spectacor Management Group, was an American worldwide venue management group headquartered in West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, that specialized in managing publicly owned facilities. It began their operation in 1977 with management of the Louisiana Superdome. It was one of the largest property management corporations in the world.
New York City received a ninth consecutive annual record of approximately 65.2 million tourists in 2018, the busiest tourist city attraction, and one of the world's overall busiest tourist attractions, counting not just overnight visitors but anyone visiting for the day from over 50 miles away, including commuters. Overall the city welcomed 37.9 million visitors who stayed overnight in 2018, of whom 13.6 million were international. Major destinations include the Empire State Building, Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island, Broadway theatre productions, Central Park, Times Square, Coney Island, the Financial District, museums, and sports stadiums. Other major visitor activities include luxury shopping along Fifth and Madison Avenues; entertainment events such as the Tribeca Film Festival; Randalls Island music festivals such as Governors Ball, Panorama and Electric Zoo; and free performances in Central Park at Summerstage and Delacorte Theater. Many New York City ethnic enclaves, such as Jackson Heights, Flushing, and Brighton Beach are major shopping destinations for first and second generation Americans.
As of 2010, Atlanta is the seventh-most visited city in the United States, with over 35 million visitors per year. The city was the 12th most popular destination for overseas visitors, who numbered 712,000 in total (2010).
Tourism in Omaha, Nebraska, United States offers visitors history, sports, nature and cultural experiences. Its principal tourist attractions are the Henry Doorly Zoo and the College World Series (CWS). A 2003 study by a Creighton University economist estimated that the CWS added $33.8 million to the city's economy that year. With 1.1 million visitors annually, the Henry Doorly Zoo is Nebraska's most popular tourist attraction. In 2007 Omaha hosted the USA Roller Sports National Championships, along with 10,000 people who auditioned for the American Idol television show at Qwest Center Omaha.
McCormick Tribune Plaza & Ice Rink or McCormick Tribune Plaza is a multi-purpose venue within Millennium Park in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. On December 20, 2001, it became the first attraction in Millennium Park to open. The $3.2 million plaza was funded by a donation from the McCormick Tribune Foundation. It has served as an ice skating rink, a dining facility and briefly as an open-air exhibition space.
Grainger Plaza is a public space that hosts the Cloud Gate sculpture. It is located in Millennium Park, which is a park built to celebrate the third millennium and which is located within the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois in the United States. The sculpture and the plaza are sometimes jointly referred to as Cloud Gate on the AT&T Plaza.
Chase Promenade is an open-air, tree-lined, pedestrian walkway that opened July 16, 2004. It is part of Millennium Park, which is located in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois in the United States. The promenade was made possible by a gift from the Bank One Foundation. It is 8 acres (3.2 ha) and used for exhibitions, festivals and other family events as well as private rentals.
The Chicago Lakefront Trail (LFT) is a 18.5-mile-long (29.8 km) partial shared-use path for walking, jogging, skateboarding, and cycling, located along the western shore of Lake Michigan in Chicago, Illinois. The trail passes through and connects Chicago's four major lakefront parks along with various beaches and recreational amenities. It also serves as a route for bicycle, skateboard and personal transporter commuters. On busy summer days 70,000 people use the trail.
This is a list of the most popular individual tourist attractions in the United States, lists of tourist attractions organized by subject region, and a selection of other notable tourist attractions and destinations.
This article contains lists of tourist attractions in England.
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