At Novo Asian Food Hall on the Strip, a scene reminiscent of a Taiwanese night market or a Singaporean hawker center, Novo Asian Food Hall’s operations manager Matthew Zelinsky says more than 5,000 people line up each week to try everything from Filipino “Bora Bora” meatballs to Korean “red bean bingsu” shaved ice. Many of the customers are not from the neighborhood.
“Events are a big part of our business,” Zelinski said, “and they don’t necessarily have to be big events like this weekend.”
Tens of thousands of people have flocked to the city in recent days for a packed weekend of events, including the Three Rivers Arts Festival, Pittsburgh Pride and a Kenny Chesney concert. Apart from the events, hotels, restaurants and bars have been booming with spending from locals and out-of-town visitors. In a way, this past weekend marked the unofficial kickoff of Pittsburgh’s peak tourist season.
From Steelers games to AnthroCon, the main reason people visit southwestern Pennsylvania is to attend events, says Jared Bacher, president and CEO of VisitPITTSBURGH, the region’s tourism bureau. “Events are the backbone of the entire tourism ecosystem,” Bacher says.
Tourism is big business for Pittsburgh’s economy. The pandemic has slammed travel plans and canceled events. Many downtown workers haven’t returned to the office, leaving them with lunch money and happy hour bills. But outside of work hours, that’s changing.
Last year, tourism brought in $6.4 billion in direct spending and more than $300 million in local tax revenue, supporting about 40,000 jobs in Allegheny County, according to the VisitPITTSBURGH annual report. That’s just shy of the $6.5 billion tourists spent in 2019, before the pandemic, but Bacher expects a full recovery this year based on the number and size of events. “We’re definitely back,” Bacher said. “You know, the calendar is completely full.”
Peak people-watching
Hotels in the area fill up between June and September, with occupancy rates up 17% during those months compared to the rest of the year, according to VisitPITTSBURGH.
For example, 83% of Swifties who attended Taylor Swift’s two concerts at Acrisure Stadium last year came from outside Allegheny County, and the events brought in about $46 million in spending for the county, according to VisitPittsburgh.
“Concerts of that magnitude, like Taylor Swift or Kenny Chesney, have a huge impact because they bring in a lot of people and they stay in the hotel,” Bacher said. “Obviously, they eat in the restaurants. They shop. They do a lot of things outside of the concert.”
For restaurants and other businesses, increased summer traffic helps them avoid the winter slump: Last year, 300,000 more people visited downtown in June than in January, according to data from the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership.
Last year, the opening day of the Three Rivers Arts Festival drew 80,000 people downtown. Attendance is up 43% since its post-pandemic return in 2021, according to Kate Irvin, senior director of economic development for the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership. “Every year it gets better and better,” she said.
Weekend Destinations
The weekend scenes in downtown Pittsburgh, along with the ripple effects from these events, are “a big part of our recovery,” he said. [from the pandemic]Irvin said the resurgence of Pittsburgh’s business district, like most cities across the country, has been driven by people going out after work.
Pittsburgh has become a weekend destination; most of the downtown crowds come on Fridays and Saturdays, not during the week, according to data from the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership. “We know that downtown draws tourists from other areas and even outside of Pittsburgh,” Irvin says. “We know that downtown is an attraction.”
The big events in town will continue after the Kenny Chesney concert, with furry conventions AnthroCon and Picklesburg scheduled for July.
But for local restaurants, preparing for crowds is an unpredictable calculus. “Preparing for these situations is always difficult because you end up having to overstaff,” Zelinsky said. “Usually, we do a lot better if we trust our staff to handle things and make ourselves available to support them.”
“The tourism boost that events bring is great, but unless you’re running a bar in the epicenter of the North Shore, you’re going to have to live with the general problem that out-of-towners are one of the most unpredictable demographics.”
