Nashville drew 16.9 million visitors in 2024, generating a record $11.2 billion in visitor spending, the fourth consecutive year the city broke its own tourism record. That works out to roughly $30.7 million per day in visitor spending, and the trend line has been consistently upward since the city began tracking it seriously.
The Scale of the Tourism Economy
Tourism is not a side industry in Nashville, it’s structural. The 73,000 people employed in hospitality and entertainment are directly dependent on visitor traffic. The Tennessee state tax on hotel rooms and tickets flows significantly from Nashville. One-third of all Tennessee tourism revenue originates in Nashville.
The growth from 14.4 million visitors in 2022 to 16.9 million in 2024 represents about a 17% increase in two years. The Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp projects continued growth as new hotel capacity (more than a dozen hotels opened or announced in the metro between 2023 and 2025) and infrastructure improvements absorb additional volume.
What Brings 16.9 Million People Here
The visitor mix is more diverse than the bachelorette party stereotype suggests:
Music tourism is the primary draw, the Grand Ole Opry, Ryman Auditorium, Broadway honky-tonks, and the Country Music Hall of Fame together form a destination that no other American city can replicate. CMA Fest alone draws 90,000-plus attendees daily over four June days and generates hundreds of millions in direct spending.
Conventions and business travel are a larger component than casual observers assume. Nashville has substantial convention infrastructure, the Music City Center, Gaylord Opryland Resort, and multiple large hotels, that draws medical, tech, and industry conferences year-round.
Leisure tourism beyond music: the food scene, sports events (Titans, Predators, Nashville SC), and the general “things to do in Nashville” bucket list draws people who have no particular attachment to country music.
Bachelorette and group travel: Nashville has become the dominant US destination for bachelorette parties, a market segment that typically involves higher-than-average per-person spending on hospitality, activities, and entertainment.
The Pressure Tourism Places on the City
16.9 million visitors in a city of 704,000 residents creates a ratio of about 24 tourists per resident per year. The concentration of that traffic in a few square blocks of downtown, particularly on Broadway, means that on a Saturday night during peak season, the tourist-to-resident ratio on the strip approaches something more like 50-to-1.
Locals feel this in parking, restaurant waits, rideshare availability, and the general sense that certain parts of their city have been optimized for visitors rather than residents. The gentrification of neighborhoods like The Gulch and parts of East Nashville is directly connected to the premium that tourism places on nearby real estate.
The Revenue Question
Despite the friction, the tourism math works for the city’s finances. Hotel occupancy tax, sales tax on visitor spending, and the broader economic multiplier effect of 16.9 million people spending money here make tourism a net positive for Nashville’s public finances even accounting for the infrastructure costs of managing the traffic.
Sources
- Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp, 2024 Tourism Economic Impact Report
- Tennessee Department of Tourist Development, statewide data
- CMA Fest official attendance and economic impact reports
- Music City Center, convention attendance data