Calgary welcomed 8.4 million visitors in 2024, and tourism generated an estimated $2.9 billion in visitor spending. The city’s tourism economy also supported 84,000 jobs, while the airport, Calgary Stampede, conventions, and major events supplied measurable channels for visitor activity. The figures below describe Calgary and its visitor economy using the measurement periods stated by each source.
Contents
- Calgary tourism at a glance
- Visitor spending and visitor reach
- Events, conventions, and business tourism
- Hotels, flights, and airport activity
- Stampede and attraction-scale visitation
- Tourism businesses, workforce, and marketing
- Convention infrastructure and future capacity
Calgary tourism at a glance
Tourism Calgary’s 2024 Annual Report provides the broadest single-year snapshot. Calgary recorded 8.4 million visitors in 2024, a 4% increase from 2023. Estimated visitor spend reached $2.9 billion, up 10% from 2023. Tourism employment stood at 84,000 Calgarians in 2024.
The city’s visitor-facing digital reach was also substantial. Visitcalgary.com received more than 6.4 million website views in 2024, and Tourism Calgary’s social channels had 400,000 followers, an 8% increase. Its visitor experience channels generated 1.2 million referrals to partners, while referrals increased 43% from 2023. Tourism Calgary issued 32,000 Experience Passes during the year.
| Calgary tourism measure | Result | Measurement period or comparison |
|---|---|---|
| Visitors | 8.4 million | 2024; up 4% from 2023 |
| Visitor spend | Estimated $2.9 billion | 2024; up 10% from 2023 |
| Tourism employment | 84,000 people | 2024 |
| Visitcalgary.com views | More than 6.4 million | 2024 |
| Social channel followers | 400,000 | 2024; up 8% |
| Airport passengers | 18.9 million | YYC, 2024 |
| Calgary Stampede guests | More than 1.47 million | 10 days in 2024 |
These measures are not interchangeable. Visitor counts describe people welcomed to Calgary, airport passengers include travelers using YYC for different purposes, and event attendance can include local residents as well as out-of-town guests. Keeping the geography and measurement basis separate makes the statistics more useful.
Visitor spending and visitor reach
The 2024 visitor-spending estimate of $2.9 billion establishes the scale of tourism expenditure in Calgary. Tourism Calgary’s 2025–2027 strategy aims to double visitor spend to $6 billion by 2035. That is a future organizational aim, not a reported 2025 result.
Tourism Calgary’s Cool-Cation article cites a Conference Board of Canada forecast of 8.7 million Calgary visitor arrivals in 2025. The forecast represented 3.6% growth over 2024. The same article reported that Calgary’s year-to-date visitor spending was up 4.0% over 2024. Within that 2025 year-to-date comparison, May had the largest monthly increase at 8.8%, June spending was up 22.9% year over year, July was up 2.1%, and August was up 1.7%.
The 2025 figures should be read as a mix of forecast and year-to-date comparisons. The 8.7 million arrivals figure was a forecast, while the spending figures were reported as year-to-date or monthly year-over-year changes. They do not establish a complete full-year 2025 total.
Tourism Calgary said its visitor experience channels produced 1.2 million partner referrals in 2024. It also reported 121 familiarization experience visits and 89 venue and site visits. These activities connect tourism promotion with local operators and destinations, while the 32,000 Experience Passes indicate another measurable visitor-experience distribution channel.
Events, conventions, and business tourism
Events were a major part of Calgary’s 2024 tourism activity. Calgary hosted 186 events in 2024, generating more than 179,000 room nights and $265 million in economic contribution. Tourism Calgary reported a 36:1 return on investment for sports and major events and a 46:1 return on investment for meetings and conventions.
Tourism Calgary’s event-focused activities were associated with 430,000 attendees in 2024. It supported 146 events with city-wide experiences and activations, and event planners who hosted in Calgary gave 95% satisfaction ratings.
The report contains two separate future-event figures. Tourism Calgary booked 157 events for future years, with those events projected to generate more than $200 million in economic impact. Elsewhere, its sales work is reported as securing 213 future events carrying an estimated $328 million in future economic impact. Because the counts and impact estimates are presented as separate reported measures, they should not be added together without a defined reconciliation.
International marketing also produced event-related room nights and economic impact. International Travel Joint Marketing Agreements ran 15% over target in 2024, generated 147,000 room nights, and produced $63.2 million in economic impact. Tourism Calgary signed more than 50 joint marketing agreements with international tour operators during the year.
The 2025 visitor picture included a large convention example. The Rotary International Convention drew more than 16,000 delegates from over 140 countries. Tourism Calgary reported nine city-wide conventions in 2025 and projected an unprecedented 12 city-wide conventions in 2026. The 2026 number is a projection, not a completed-event count.
Hotels, flights, and airport activity
Hotel and air-travel measures show how tourism demand moved through Calgary’s accommodation and transportation systems. Calgary hotel occupancy rose 6.6% in February 2024, according to Tourism Calgary’s 2024 Annual Report.
Tourism Calgary’s 2025 Cool-Cation article reported a 2.5% year-to-date increase in total hotel room nights booked. Hotel occupancy was up 7.6% in May 2025 compared with May 2024, up 13.4% in June, and up 1.0% in both July and August. These are comparison rates, not occupancy percentages; the supplied figures measure change against the corresponding 2024 periods.
Air connectivity also increased in the 2025 year-to-date figures. Incoming international flights were up 11.1%, while domestic flights were up 9.2%.
YYC Calgary International Airport handled 18.9 million passengers in 2024, according to YYC Facts & Figures and the YYC Annual Report. Passenger volume increased 2.2% over 2023. Within the 2024 total, domestic enplaned and deplaned passengers accounted for 12.604 million, and transborder enplaned and deplaned passengers accounted for 3.864 million.
YYC’s busiest departure day in 2024 was July 15, with 276 flights. The airport’s commercial and retail revenue reached $100.6 million. Several reported infrastructure measures describe airport operations beyond passenger traffic: YYC installed more than 8,300 LED fixtures, which saved 540 tCO2e per year, and its West Runway Rehabilitation project saved 15% of total potable water requirements. Its zero-waste roadmap targets diversion of up to 90% of waste.
Stampede and attraction-scale visitation
The Calgary Stampede was one of the city’s largest reported visitor attractions in 2024. The Calgary Stampede 2024 Report to the Community recorded more than 1.47 million guests across 10 days, the highest attendance in Stampede history.
Two individual attendance measures show how that total was distributed across major programming. Tim Hortons Family Day drew 201,260 guests on July 7, 2024, while the Stampede Parade on July 5 had more than 350,000 spectators.
The 2024 rodeo format featured 30 top athletes in each of six events. The entertainment lineup featured 90 musical acts. The parade included 612 volunteers, 19 floats, 11 marching bands, and nine mounted colour parties. Its route took 6,560 steps to complete. These figures describe the scale and components of a specific 2024 Stampede and parade program; they are not separate estimates of unique visitors to Calgary.
Tourism Calgary also reported that the Calgary Attractions Pass was recognized as the number-one Free Consumer Pass in North America in 2024. The recognition is a ranking claim reported by Tourism Calgary, while the 1.2 million partner referrals and 32,000 Experience Passes provide separate activity measures for visitor experience channels.
Tourism businesses, workforce, and marketing
Tourism Calgary’s membership included 1,122 partners in 2024, including 30 Indigenous businesses and more than 75 women-owned businesses. In 2025, Tourism Calgary said it represented over 1,200 local businesses in Calgary. The two figures come from different reporting periods and should not be treated as a directly measured year-over-year change.
Marketing and earned media supplied additional reach. Tourism Calgary reported $917 million in earned media reach in 2024. Its Things To Do campaign invested $200,000, worked with 37 partners, and trained more than 1,000 operators. The organization’s arts-focused initiative generated more than 935,000 local impressions.
Workforce and volunteer measures show the people involved in the visitor economy. Tourism Calgary’s governance section said the organization had over 60 employees in 2024. Calgary tourism volunteer activity involved more than 3,000 volunteers. The White Hat Academy had 779 graduates in 2024, including 421 graduates from the SAIT Tourism & Hospitality Program. The partnership with SAIT had reached more than 1,556 students since 2019.
The Calgary White Hat Awards recorded 734 nominees, more than 200 volunteers, 20 awards, and 1,776 gala attendees in 2024. These measures refer to the awards program rather than the entire tourism workforce.
Tourism Calgary’s reported 2024 funding model consisted of 51% from the Calgary Hotel Association, 41% from the City of Calgary, 5% from Travel Alberta, and 3% from other funding. These percentages describe the organization’s funding model, not the proportion of total tourism spending contributed by each source.
Convention infrastructure and future capacity
The expanded BMO Centre is a major piece of Calgary’s convention infrastructure. The City of Calgary says the centre now has more than 1 million square feet of total space and is Western Canada’s largest convention centre. The expansion is 565,000 square feet larger than the prior building footprint and added more than 100,000 square feet of new exhibition space.
The centre includes 38 meeting rooms and two ballrooms totaling 70,000 square feet. It also includes a 100,000-square-foot outdoor plaza and can host up to 33,000 guests. The City of Calgary projects the BMO Centre’s annual economic impact at around $100 million. The expansion cost $500 million and was delivered on budget.
These facility figures help explain how Calgary can pursue larger meetings and conventions, but capacity is not the same as booked attendance. The reported 33,000 guests is a hosting capacity, while the 16,000-plus delegates at the 2025 Rotary International Convention and the 186 events hosted in 2024 are observed event measures.
The city’s downtown convention ecosystem is anchored by projects that include the BMO Centre expansion and arts transformation investments. Together with the reported event pipeline, airport passenger volume, hotel room-night growth, and international flight increases, the infrastructure data describes a tourism system expanding across leisure travel, major attractions, and business events.