Wonderful tourism facts accidentally acquired from US government sites.

US government websites are among the slowest on the internet, and with all that government funding, this must have a reason. It’s my contention that they’re deliberately slow so that you’re forced to learn all kinds of wonderful things you never thought of inquiring about. Here’s what I learned from simply wanting to know how many tourists come to each separate State every year:

Manhattan is the most popular tourist destination in the US and draws roughly sixty times as many tourists every year as there are people living in Alaska. Hence Alaska is America’s less densely populated state, and Times Square is America’s most crowded couple of streets.

For every person living in Hawaii, there are ten tourists visiting there.

About eight times as many people visit Cape Cod every year than there are people living in Boston. And about forty times as many swing by Faneuil Hall.

A little less than half of the tourists in the US come from Western Europe. A little over a quarter come from Asia. That means that roughly 25% of visiting foreigners in the US come from countries that most Americans have never heard of.

For every business trip to the US there are two holidays, and tourists tend to stay more than twice as long as business people. Another curious detail is that in the US there are slightly more overseas tourists traveling alone than overseas business folk traveling with associates. Also worth mentioning is that for every 16 visitors that say they’re there for leisure, one is sneakily there for business, while for every 22 so-called business visitors there’s one who does nothing but hang around and get a tan!

Among tourists to the US there are about twice as many first-timers as there are among business people, which leads to believe that it’s better to keep doing business with Americans than to keep visiting them socially.

Tourists to the US are slightly more often male than female, but if they come to do business they’re much more often male. This may mean that there are more men in overseas businesses but it may also mean that overseas businesses prefer to keep their women close to home.

Male visitors are in general four years older than women visitors, no matter if they come to do business or to go sight seeing. Tourists are in general one year older than business people, which makes perfect sense. Curiously enough, business people who come to the US have roughly a 15% higher annual income than tourists who come to the US.

How many tourists actually visit any specific State per year remains a mystery.