CHICAGO (WLS) — Lollapalooza came to Chicago in 2005 and has been here ever since. The four-day event typically attracts 100,000 people each day to Grant Park.

What do major summer events and festivals mean for the city’s economy and Chicago’s profile as a tourist destination?

“Lollapalooza is huge. I mean, the sheer impact with that amount of people,” said Senior Director of Cultural Tourism with Choose Chicago Jason Lesniewicz. “They stay in our hotels, go to restaurants, they go to after shows, to arenas all over the city. So the shear numbers you know the impact is there. But then there’s another side effect that we love as a tourism agency. It’s these premiere events choosing Chicago to come here and do business really helps raise our profile as a destination.”

“It’s kind of two-fold for us. We know the economic impact is going to be there. We’ve seen it in previous years. But then raising Chicago’s profile is what we’re all about,” Lesniewicz added.

The summer of 2024 has been huge for Chicago, and only because of Lollapalooza. Other high-profile events include Sundance and NASCAR.

“We put on great events. This is what we do as a city,” Lesniewicz said.

Lesniewicz said Chicago has the infrastructure, hotels and transit that allow the city to host large gatherings.

“A big thing about the DNC this year, for us, all the delegates get to stay in downtown hotels outside of the security area. So they can bring their families, their loved ones, their friends. And we give them the tools to explore the city because we know that many of the delegates will be at McCormick Place and the United Center, but everyone else, we’re giving them the tools to explore the city, get out and hopefully spend and go to restaurants, go to our attractions, our museums, our cruises Everything that we have offering in the summer is available to them and we have provided them with guides to do so.

The millions of visitors who come to the city every year need a place to stay. For many, it is one of the city’s hotels.

Michael Jacobson is president and CEO of the Illinois Hotel and Lodging Association. Chicago hotels were hit hard during the pandemic and are still recovering.

“Even if you look at the key metric we’re measuring, the hotel occupancy rate, we expect this year to end around 67%. That’s up from 65% last year. So, good trend that we’re continuing to increase. But it’s down from 74% below our peak in 2019. So we expect 2028 to be the year we reach that pre-pandemic level.”

“The Lolla weekend is always a sell-out. The biggest weekend of the year every year.”

Last year was also a busy time as Taylor Swift performed several concerts at Soldier Field.

“The DNC will also be great. And I think specifically for the DNC, the long-term benefits that we’ll get from the DNC because of the hundreds of journalists we’ll get from all over the world who are going to use the Chicago skyline as their background during their broadcasts and then also the political influencers who, for better or worse, have framed the narrative of our city in recent years, I think we will be able to change many of the preconceived notions of people who may not even have been in our city for the past decade.”