Economic Revitalization
Tracking downtown revitalization
Since the onset of COVID-19, DSA has been tracking the impact on our local economy. As downtown bounces back, we continue to follow dozens of metrics to trace the path to full economic recovery. A few of these metrics are below.
Downtown Revitalization Dashboard
April 2024 (March data)
Downtown Seattle was the first American urban center to experience the impacts of COVID-19, enduring a sudden economic downturn. As downtown continues to evolve, DSA will publish a monthly Revitalization Dashboard examining key metrics. The data sets provide a comparison point to the same time period in 2019. Additionally, the dashboard will feature notable stories that provide context regarding downtown’s renewal and reemergence.
Please credit the Downtown Seattle Association Revitalization Dashboard for use of charts, data and images on this page.
Total monthly visitors since 2019
Nearly 2.4 million unique visitors came downtown in March 2024, representing a 5% increase from the previous year. The total number of March visitors was 87% of the number seen in March 2019.
Average daily worker foot traffic (Monday–Friday)
In March, downtown averaged more than 87,000 daily workers — the highest daily average for worker foot traffic since February 2020. This figure represents a 14% increase from March 2023 and 52% of the daily foot traffic seen in March 2019.
Monthly hotel rooms sold compared to 2019
Downtown hotels saw a nearly 10% increase in rooms sold in March 2024 compared to the previous year. This represented 97% of demand in March 2019.
In March, the number of occupied apartment units was more than 57,000. This represented a 2.5% increase in occupied units compared to Q2 2023 and a 16.5% increase compared to Q2 2019.
Of Note in Downtown
April marks the start of cruise season in downtown Seattle. The Port of Seattle estimates the cruise industry generates nearly $900 million of economic activity annually. The Port is expecting more than 800,000 revenue passengers this season.
As of April, downtown has more than 2,600 street-level businesses, with several recent or upcoming openings — offering everything from salads and suits to donuts and donburi bowls.
Coming Up in Downtown
The culinary celebration Seattle Restaurant Week started on April 14 and runs through April 27. There are 51 participating restaurants in downtown’s 12 neighborhoods.
The curtain rises for the 50th Seattle International Film Festival next month, with opening night on May 9. This year’s SIFF lineup will be announced and tickets will be on sale to SIFF members on April 17; on sale to the general public April 18.
The Clipper Race fleet sets sail from Alaskan Way on May 3 for the “USA Coast-to-Coast” leg of their monthslong global sailing competition. This activity culminates a series of free events that start at Bell Harbor on April 21.
COVID-19 Downtown Recovery Weekly Snapshot
These charts show weekly statistics from March 2020 through the most recent week available. To indicate the level of recovery, data is displayed as a percent of the same metric for the comparable week of 2019.
Notes on Sources
Downtown foot traffic data are provided by Placer.ai and are based on cell phone location data. Each person is counted once per day. International visitors are not included. Subsets of this data in the charts are as follows:
- Office worker presence is estimated based on visits by workers who were present between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. on weekdays in the downtown neighborhoods with the heaviest concentration of office space.*
- Total visitors includes those who do not live or work downtown. It does not include international visitors.
- Hotel data are based on monthly reports from STR, provided by Visit Seattle.
- Apartment occupancy data are from CoStar. This is reported quarterly but the current quarter data are updated in real-time as new information is added to the database.
- Domestic visitors counts those who do not live or work downtown.
- Total foot traffic includes all visits to downtown by domestic visitors, residents and workers.
- Pike Place Market visitors includes domestic visitors who do not live or work at the Pike Place Market.
*Note that workers who have not visited their work site in the past 90 days are classified as “visitors” until they are regularly visiting their work site at least three times in a one-week period.