SALEM — The numbers are in on the first year of a newly revitalized Destination Salem.
The city's tourism office, which was resurrected in October 2007 to market the Witch City's hot spots, distributed 225,000 visitor guides last year.
It sent out 100,000 copies of its Haunted Happenings event guides.
Its Web site, Salem.org, attracted 228,373 visitors from 158 countries.
Some 793,362 visitors came to Salem from Oct. 1, 2007, to Sept. 30, 2008 — a 10 percent increase over the same period a year earlier.
But maybe the most important number to many in this city is $55.6 million — the amount of money those visitors spent while they were here.
Those are the figures Destination Salem presented during its annual meeting yesterday morning at the Peabody Essex Museum.
It's been a busy year, especially considering the organization was dormant and without an executive director just 15 months ago.
Vacations, it turns out, have become as important as buying groceries or paying rent, according to a study conducted by Open the Door Inc., a Boston-based firm hired by the city to put together a three-year marketing plan.
"People are still going to travel even with the economic downturn," said Executive Director Kate Fox, who returned to Destination Salem after a five-year absence in the fall of 2007.
The study also shows that 96 percent of Salem tourists are "leisure visitors." About 36 percent of those leisure visitors live within 50 miles of the city and 13 percent come to Salem in October.
Looking ahead to 2009, Destination Salem plans to target affluent professionals with annual incomes greater than $75,000 from New York, New Jersey and New England. But it will also collaborate with state tourism agencies to attract international visitors, who flocked to Salem last year partly because of the dwindling value of the dollar.
It also plans to keep the tag line "Discover the magic of Salem," which it has used since 2002.
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