October dominates Nashville tourism
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Illustration: Maura Losch, Allie Carl/Axios
October has routinely been Nashville's dominant tourism month for the last decade, including last year when the city smashed a record for hotel rooms sold.
Why it matters: The city's top hospitality executives say the pleasant weather, popularity of football games and mixture of leisure and convention travelers conspire to make October Nashville's best month for tourism.
By the numbers: Setting aside pandemic years 2020 and 2021, when tourism cratered, October has been the best tourism month every year since 2013.
- Last October, Nashville reached a milestone when it eclipsed 900,000 hotel room bookings for the first time in a single month. There were 938,962 hotel rooms sold.
- In breaking the record for room nights, the city also eclipsed its monthly record for hotel revenue, generating $207 million, according to the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp.
- The record may not stand for long, as the forecast is for 967,736 bookings this month, according to data from the CVC. Final numbers won't be available for several weeks.
- Thousands of rooms have been added over the last decade to meet the rising demand, and two of the city's hotels — The Hermitage Hotel and Urban Cowboy Nashville — have been named among the best in the world.
The intrigue: It's a slightly counterintuitive trend. The summer is prime live music season, with major tourism drivers like CMA Fest, Bonnaroo and the annual July 4 celebration downtown.
What she's saying: The strong October numbers are a victory lap for Music City Center, the city's $623 million convention hall that opened in 2013.
- "October has always been a prime month for conventions since it is after school starts and before the holidays," says CVC president and CEO Deana Ivey.
- She adds that meeting planners say it's the ideal time to begin planning for the new year.
Zoom in: Large conventions in town this month include the Association for the Advancement of Blood and Biotherapies and the International Money Expo. The two conferences brought a combined 9,000 attendees to Nashville.
- Other tourism drivers this month include Titans games and a mix of major concerts such as Jason Isbell at the Ryman, Trisha Yearwood at the Schermerhorn and The 1975 at Bridgestone Arena.
Be smart: Charles Robert Bone, who serves as attorney for the city's Convention Center Authority and invests in hospitality businesses like The Southern and Acme Feed and Seed, attributes the strong numbers to the city's intangible factors.
- "You have appeal on the leisure side and on the business traveler side," Bone tells Axios.
- "I think it's a mix of the weather, the time of year, football's going on, there's lots of music."