Recent figures show Oklahoma City's visitor economy expanding

On almost any given weekday in downtown Oklahoma City over the past year, it was hard not to notice the large number of folks walking up and down the streets, with lanyards dangling from their necks, either heading to, or returning from, the Oklahoma City Convention Center. They might have even been making a beeline to Bricktown for lunch or dinner or catching the OKC Streetcar to various other attractions in the area, including the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum or Automobile Alley.

In other sections of town, like the fairgrounds or the Adventure District, parking lots were often filled to capacity as visitors attended a national horse show or spent the afternoon at one of OKC’s top tourist destinations such as the Oklahoma City Zoo or the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.

This is no accident but rather the result of a highly coordinated effort by public and private entities around the metro to vault OKC into the forefront of people’s minds as a vacation destination. And it seems to be working. Most notably, and according to the Fiscal Year 2022 Annual Report by the Oklahoma City Convention & Visitors Bureau, Oklahoma City hosted 188 groups and generated more than 391,000 hotel room nights from July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2022, which includes convention center, equine and sporting events, as well as motorcoach groups.

According to CVB President Zac Craig, from January through June 2021, only about 3,000 visitors attended events at the convention center, a far cry from the approximately 180,000 visitors the convention center saw for the entire 2022 fiscal year.

“What really excites me is that we're bringing in new audiences to OKC, and so we have a lot of these new city-wide conventions that are coming into town that have never put their eyes on Oklahoma City,” Craig said.

One such convention is the National Brownfields Training Conference, the largest event in the nation focused on environmental revitalization and economic redevelopment. More than 2,500 attendees visited OKC from August 16-19 for a week of panels discussions, workshop, films, and other learning activities. Later this month, the International Economic Development Council, a non-profit, non-partisan membership organization serving approximately 5,000 economic developers from around the world, will hold its annual conference in the OKC.

No doubt conventions and other events of this size and magnitude bring people, but more importantly, these visitors spend money – and lots of it – on things like hotel stays, meals, and attractions, which, in turn, are good for the city’s economy. For the first time ever, hotel tax revenue collections topped more than $6 million in FY 2022.

“Conventions are key to us, and are our bread and butter,” said OKC National Memorial President and CEO Kari Watkins. “It's important to work special deals with their tour operators or to stay open later. Those are all things we do."

"A busy convention center is good for all of us.”

Conventions are an important piece of the puzzle for OKC’s visitor economy but so are other events and attractions across the metro that bring out-of-town visitors and outside dollars. The National Memorial & Museum, OKC Zoo and equine events at the fairgrounds are big money makers for the city but so are other attractions such as the recently opened First Americans Museum that is situated near the south bank of the Oklahoma River; RIVERSPORT OKC, where locals and nonlocals alike can kayak, paddleboard, and even surf and snow ski; and the Women’s College World Series, which broke numerous attendance records and drew a national TV audience of nearly 2 million.

“If you haven't been to the First American Museum, what an unbelievable attraction is this jewel of the city that was decades in the making," Craig said.

"We’re a city that's steeped in this rich, Native American, and western culture. Now we also have modern distinct amenities, like other first-tier cities. When we look at German-speaking Europe, when we look at the United Kingdom, they are fascinated by this part of our brand. It's exciting and does open us up to those customers."

One attraction set to open in early 2023 and expected to draw large numbers of out-of-town visitors to Oklahoma City for many years to come is the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine, currently under construction in South OKC. The shrine is named for Oklahoma native Father Stanley Rother, the first U.S.-born priest and martyr ever beatified.

“The Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine is an unbelievable footprint that I think is going to draw a lot of traffic to south Oklahoma City. Look no further than the beatification ceremony at the Cox Center to see what kind of international appeal, especially from the Latin American countries, that the Rother Shrine is going to have. Our convention sales team is proactively seeking out faith- based conventions to come to the convention center and then go off-site and experience this shrine. So, it opens us up to new audiences, and I can't wait for this shrine to open,” Craig said.  

This story originally appeared in the September 2022 edition of the VeloCity newsletter.