Toronto tourism up 2.8% in 2011 as city breaks hotel booking record

File photo of tourists on a sight-seeing boat on Lake Ontario. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Boris Spremo

Toronto reached an important tourism milestone in 2011 — hotel room bookings surpassed the nine million mark for the first time.

Tourism Toronto released the encouraging figures this week and outlined where the visitor surges came from.

A record 9.1 million hotel rooms were booked in the city in 2011, which marks a 2.8 per cent increase from 2010. More than 1,000 new rooms opened in Toronto last year — many of them in luxury hotels including the Ritz-Carlton, Thompson and Le Germain Maple Leaf Square.

There was a 6.2 per cent increase in international travellers in the city last year, the agency said, with the highest growth among Chinese (representing a 34.5 per cent increase) and Indian tourists (a 13.2 per cent increase).

Italians visited Toronto in increasing numbers (a 9.3 per cent hike in 2011), as did Brazilians (9.2 per cent more).

The highest number of overseas visitors still came from the United Kingdom, even though numbers were down by about three per cent last year. Just over 191,000 people from the U.K. came to Toronto last year, Tourism Toronto said.

And visits from our neighbours to the south were up last year, as well.

There was a 2.7 per cent increase in overnight visits from Americans last year for a total of two million.

"Toronto has a new lustre among sophisticated U.S. travellers, illustrated by its inclusion as one of Travel + Leisure magazine's 'Hottest Destinations in 2012,'" Tourism Toronto president David Whitaker said in a statement Monday. "Getting that kind of recommendation is a real coup and we should all be proud that the efforts so many have put into building this city over the past decade are being recognized."

Tourism Toronto also credited the fact the city is now a major destination for business meetings and conventions for the boost in visitors last year.

And it will only get better this summer when Microsoft hosts its 2012 Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto. More than 15,000 people are expected to attend.