Spokane tourism officials are optimistic that visitor numbers and expenditures will increase in 2014, including among those here for conventions, sports events, and leisure travel.
Cheryl Kilday, president and CEO of Visit Spokane, says that organization expects visitor spending here to  increase to somewhere in the range of $896 million to $913 million, compared to a high of $870 million in 2012.
The visitor spending for 2013 should be on par with 2012, Kilday says. She also says it is predicting a total of 3.4 million overnight visitors for 2014, up from about 3.3 million in 2013.
Kilday says Visit Spokane currently has 69,000 group room nights already on the books for next year, and predicts as many as 20,000 more, as some groups will book in 2014, Kilday says. Group room nights for 2013 are projected to come in at 97,457.  
Group room nights are tracked rooms used by people here for meetings, conventions, sports, and other major events.
“This is the first time in a long time that we’ve been this optimistic,” Kilday says.
Visit Spokane has been expanding its marketing efforts nationally by reinstating a sales position in Chicago, similar to current positions in Seattle and Washington, D.C. Keith Backsen, Visit Spokane’s vice president and director of sales, says that’s important to the success of the upcoming convention center expansion and adjacent hotel project, as well as for attracting groups here in general.
On the leisure tourism side, Kilday says Visit Spokane will be reinstituting some television campaigns that it didn’t air this year, as well as ramping up Spokane’s culinary tourism.
“We’ve learned from research that culinary tourism is important,” she says. “We really have a great culinary product here.”
Matt Jensen, director of marketing for the Davenport Hotel Collection, says the company expects better convention business next year.
In particular, Jensen says, Spokane will be hosting a Council of Engineering and Scientific Society Executives convention next July, which will bring representatives from 187 different organizations to Spokane. This is a big opportunity, he contends, because the convention attendees will include a lot of meeting planners who decide where to bring their societies for conventions and conferences.
“We’re inviting all these meeting planners to Spokane to showcase Spokane,” Jensen says. “Not many cities have an opportunity to do that.”
Jensen also notes that the construction of the convention center hotel, under way across Spokane Falls Boulevard from the Spokane Convention Center, will continue throughout 2014, and hopefully will finish by late 2015. Walt and Karen Worthy, owners of the Davenport Hotel Collection, are developing the convention center hotel.
Kilday says that while the hotel won’t be finished until 2015, there are already groups interested in staying there.
“There are a lot of pending groups on the books,” she says.
Along with conventions, sports events are expected to bring a significant amount of business to the area in 2014, says Eric Sawyer, president and CEO of the Spokane Sports Commission. Sawyer says the commission has seen visitor growth in the Spokane area of between 3 percent and 10 percent every year for the last 10 years.
“Our strategies are consistent,” Sawyer says. “One is continuing to work with local groups to continue to build these events, and the other is to bid on new events.”
Events planned for 2014 include the second and third rounds of the NCAA March Madness tournament, the Pacific Northwest volleyball qualifying tournament, and staples like Bloomsday and Hoopfest.
Coeur d’Alene is expecting to see the usual increase of 5 percent to 10 percent in lodging revenues says Coeur d’Alene Convention & Visitor’s Bureau manager Katherine Coppock.
She says the lodging revenues in Kootenai County for the 2013 year are up 18 percent compared with last year.