Atlanta events generate substantial travel, attendance, and economic activity across convention centers, stadiums, cultural gatherings, and trade shows. The figures below cover fiscal 2024, calendar 2024, and 2025 reporting, with each measurement period identified.
Contents
- Atlanta’s visitor and event economy
- GWCCA campus attendance
- Visitor spending and economic impact
- Taxes, public revenue, and investment
- Conventions and trade shows
- Sports, entertainment, and fan events
Atlanta’s visitor and event economy
The Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau (ACVB) says Atlanta’s hospitality industry generated an estimated 51 million visitors in 2024 and $20 billion. These are city hospitality figures, and the visitor total is an estimate for 2024 rather than a count of event attendees alone. The same ACVB source reports that metro Atlanta visitation increased from 35 million to 57 million visitors annually under William Pate’s leadership; that historical comparison is presented as reported, not independently verified here.
Atlanta’s air connectivity helps explain the scale of its event market. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) served 108.1 million passengers in 2024, its second-highest annual count in history. Total passengers increased 3% from 2023, while the airport recorded 796,224 takeoffs and landings. Aircraft operations rose 2.6% compared with 2023, and cargo operations increased 6%.
ATL’s annual direct economic impact is reported as $66 billion in Georgia. The ACVB 2025 Annual Report says the airport has more than 160 domestic destinations and nearly 90 international destinations across more than 50 countries. Those route figures describe connectivity available in the annual-report period, while the passenger and operations figures above describe calendar 2024.
ACVB’s 2025 activity also shows the volume of organized event business. Its sales team organized and hosted nearly 140 customer planning visits. The bureau provided enhanced service support to more than 50 mid-tier and citywide conventions/events and to more than 240 groups in total. ACVB successfully executed 19 major citywides in 2025, and its annual meeting drew nearly 700 members, city and county officials, and industry stakeholders.
The 2025 ACVB annual report says Atlanta had more than 60 MICHELIN-recognized restaurants. The report also notes that the annual meeting celebrated the centennial anniversaries of Delta Air Lines and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. The Atlanta Hospitality Hall of Fame was the 25th annual ceremony in 2024 and the 26th annual ceremony in 2025.
GWCCA campus attendance
The Georgia World Congress Center Authority (GWCCA) campus hosted 131 events in fiscal 2024. Its grand total attendance was 3,389,863. Spectator events supplied the largest listed attendance category at 2,558,829, followed by participation sports at 216,000, trade shows at 219,930, and consumer shows at 173,000.
The remaining listed categories show how varied Atlanta’s event calendar is. Conferences accounted for 120,179 attendees; general meetings and other events, 75,402; graduations, 10,900; outdoor, charity, and entertainment events, 15,125; and film shoots, 498. These are GWCCA campus attendance figures for fiscal 2024, not estimates of all events held throughout metro Atlanta.
| GWCCA campus event category | Attendance, fiscal 2024 |
|---|---|
| Spectator events | 2,558,829 |
| Participation sports | 216,000 |
| Trade shows | 219,930 |
| Consumer shows | 173,000 |
| Conferences | 120,179 |
| General meetings/other | 75,402 |
| Graduations | 10,900 |
| Outdoor/charity/entertainment | 15,125 |
| Film shoots | 498 |
| Grand total | 3,389,863 |
GWCCA reported a nearly 5% increase in campus visitors in fiscal 2024. Out-of-state visitors represented 33% of campus visitors and totaled 1,115,138. GWCCA events generated 2.35 million out-of-state visitor days, up 6% from 2.22 million the previous year. Together, the attendance and visitor-day figures distinguish people attending campus events from the longer-duration travel activity generated by those events.
Visitor spending and economic impact
The GWCCA 2024 Annual Report puts campus economic impact at $1,840,203,521 in fiscal 2024. Direct spending by out-of-state visitors reached $1.59 billion and represented 86.2% of total direct spending. An out-of-state visitor attending a Georgia World Congress Center conference spent $361 per day in Atlanta.
GWCC events accounted for 61% of the authority’s total economic impact, while Mercedes-Benz Stadium accounted for 40%. The campus generated over $82 million in direct profit for Georgia in fiscal 2024. GWCCA also says it averaged more than $50 million annually in direct profit over the preceding 15 years. The 15-year statement is a reported historical average, not a new fiscal-2024 total.
Several individual events illustrate the range of Atlanta’s event economy. IPPE 2024 opened with 620,850 square feet of exhibit space, 1,432 exhibitors, and attendance topping 31,000. More than 9,000 international visitors attended, representing 133 countries. MODEX welcomed 48,733 attendees and 1,164 exhibitors in 2024, using 580,000 net square feet of exhibit space.
MomoCon had over 55,800 attendees in 2024, with attendees from all 50 states. GWCCA estimated its economic impact at nearly $35 million. CHEERSPORT had more than 1,400 teams in 2024. These figures are event-specific reported totals and should not be added to the GWCCA grand total without confirming whether their attendance is included in the campus count.
Taxes, public revenue, and investment
GWCCA events generated nearly $100 million in state tax and fee revenues and more than $84 million for local governments in fiscal 2024. The local-government total included $26.1 million in hotel/motel taxes. Across the campus, events generated $183,834,968 in total tax revenues.
The detailed tax breakdown reported by GWCCA included $52,777,053 in state sales tax, $20,029,801 in state personal income tax, $8,128,232 in state hotel/motel fee revenue, and $18,201,714 in other state taxes. Local revenue included $26,100,923 in local hotel/motel fee revenue and $58,597,245 in local sales tax revenue. These detailed amounts are fiscal-2024 campus event figures; the rounded “nearly” and “more than” totals are reported summary descriptions.
GWCCA completed $458 million in campus projects in fiscal 2024 and more than 35 additional campus improvement projects. Its campus development update listed $83 million in construction-phase projects for the Signia by Hilton Atlanta project, plus $1 million in planning-phase projects and $764,000 in design-phase projects.
The Signia by Hilton Atlanta community legacy program involved 200 volunteer hours and reached over 20,000 lives in the Atlanta area. GWCCA and Signia team members provided 22,013 pounds of food, described as equivalent to 18,344 meals. These figures measure reported community activity associated with the program, not event attendance.
Conventions and trade shows
Atlanta’s convention profile combines large exhibit footprints with international reach. IPPE 2024’s 620,850 square feet and 1,432 exhibitors show the scale of a major industry exhibition, while its attendance topped 31,000 and its international visitors exceeded 9,000 from 133 countries.
MODEX’s 2024 figures provide a second convention benchmark: 48,733 attendees, 1,164 exhibitors, and 580,000 net square feet of exhibit space. The comparison is useful because both events report attendance, exhibitor counts, and exhibit-area measurements, although they represent different event programs and industries.
| Event | Attendance | Exhibitors/teams | Exhibit or event scale |
|---|---|---|---|
| IPPE 2024 | More than 31,000 | 1,432 exhibitors | 620,850 sq. ft. |
| MODEX 2024 | 48,733 | 1,164 exhibitors | 580,000 net sq. ft. |
| CHEERSPORT 2024 | Not reported here | More than 1,400 teams | Team-based event |
| MomoCon 2024 | More than 55,800 | Not reported here | Attendees from all 50 states |
ACVB’s 2025 sales team activity adds another measure of convention demand: nearly 140 customer planning visits. The bureau’s enhanced service support covered more than 50 mid-tier and citywide conventions/events and more than 240 groups in total. Those counts describe ACVB-supported business, not the number of all conventions held in Atlanta.
Sports, entertainment, and fan events
Spectator events were the largest GWCCA campus attendance category in fiscal 2024, with 2,558,829 attendees. A single sports and entertainment example was Lionel Messi’s Copa América match at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which drew more than 70,000 fans.
Atlanta was selected to host eight matches at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, according to the GWCCA 2024 Annual Report. Five are group-stage matches and three are knockout-round matches; one of the eight is a semifinal. These are scheduled hosting allocations, not completed attendance results, so they should not be combined with the 2024 attendance totals.
The event pipeline also includes the 2024 and 2025 Atlanta Hospitality Hall of Fame ceremonies, identified by ACVB as the 25th and 26th annual ceremonies respectively. Alongside sports, conventions, and consumer gatherings, these recurring ceremonies show how Atlanta’s event activity spans business, civic, cultural, and entertainment programming.