How Many Tourists Come To The Jersey Shore Each Year?

While sitting in some traffic on the Parkway over the weekend, I had a query...

How many BENNYs come to the Jersey Shore each year?

I know trying to figure out how many people from Bayonne, Elizabeth, Newark, and New York would be almost impossible to figure out, so I reframed my question.

How many tourists visit the Jersey Shore in the summer?

Unfortunately, this question was also a little too specific for the internet.

I couldn't find an answer that specifically stated how many people come to the Shore during the summer months, all sources showed stats for the entire year.

I think we can assume that the vast majority of people are coming to visit our beautiful shores between Memorial Day Weekend and Labor Day Weekend.

We just assume that anyone at the beach after Labor Day is a local celebrating the greatest time of the year at the Jersey Shore.

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Seriously, local summer is amazing. The water is the warmest that it has been all year and little to no tourists.

I digress...

What's even more annoying is that most tourism stats are even more vague than not being specific to the time of year.

How many people visit New Jersey each year?

According to the New Jersey Division of Travel and Tourism, over 120 million people visited in 2023.

I need to repeat that for emphasis and to let it really sink in because I didn't believe it at first.

120 million people came to New Jersey last year.

I didn't believe it until I recalled the traffic I sat in on the Parkway and then I thought that figure was a little low.

In 2022, New Jersey welcomed over 114,000,000 visitors.

Lucky for the local economies, those 120,000,000 people spent $49.1 billion.

Just crazy.

I think it's safe to assume that the majority of those 120,000,000 people were spending their time at the Jersey Shore because why would anyone visit anywhere else in the state?

I kid, I kid.

Sort of...

The New Jersey Division of Travel and Tourism does expect the number of visitors to increase in 2024, so keep that in mind if you have to drive anywhere this summer.

The traffic may just get worse.

The BENNYs love to come "down the shore" (or however they phrase it), but do they actually like our beaches?