The family of six, with children ages 18 to 11, toured the center’s expansive 21,000-seat auditorium, learning about the organ’s more than 7,700 pipes. Then they walked along the urban gardens atop the roof, overlooking Temple Square―which was next on their itinerary. Although the Wells had primarily traveled to Utah to bring their oldest son to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Missionary Training Center in Provo, a visit to the church’s Conference Center and adjacent Temple Square was a must on their three-day trip.
“We chose to go there because we watch the world semi-annual General Conference from our home in Southern California. It was a great opportunity for us to see the venue where this conference happens, and just to get a feel for the scope of the venue itself. Making the connection after seeing it from the TV screen to in-person, to be able to see the history behind it, was really interesting,” says Emihlie Wells.
While here, the family rented a car, stayed in a Provo-area Airbnb, and ate at local restaurants (of note—Wells said they enjoyed Salt Lake’s Porcupine Grill and Orem’s Los Hermanos Restaurant). In other words, after coming to Utah for a church-related event, they spent tourism dollars in the state.
The Wells are not alone. Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from around the state, country, and world travel to Salt Lake City, Utah County, and other top spots, drawn by religious events such as dropping a child off at the MTC, attending General Conference, or catching multi-day conferences at Brigham Young University. While here, they contribute to Utah’s economy with their dining, transportation, and—if not staying with friends or family—lodging dollars.
It’s not just members of the predominant local faith that visit sites related to the Church. “With our meetings, conventions, leisure travelers, skiers—you name it—people obviously are interested in visiting Temple Square and other heritage landmarks,” says Shawn Stinson, director of communications for Visit Salt Lake.
All of this translates to religious tourism dollars, and in 2018, “tourists spent $9.2 billion in the state, and that translated into $1.3 billion in state and local tax revenues,” according to Vicki Varela, director of the Utah Office of Tourism, while speaking at a recent Utah Business Travel & Tourism Roundtable.
While there is scant data on religious tourism specifically—the closest would be a 2017 visitor profile study presented to the Utah Office of Tourism that revealed 10 percent of visitors to Utah visit “historical sites and churches”—local industry experts confirm that religious tourism makes an impact, so much so that it is often part of the overall “marketing Utah” message.
A compelling part of the “visit Utah” story
Take, for example, Utah Office of Tourism itineraries. The itineraries suggest everything from red rock adventures to foodie-and-brewery tours, and even the four-day “Ski City – Downhill + Downtown” itinerary includes a visit to Temple Square.
The engaging website copy reads: “First-time visitors might also include a trip to Temple Square. The spiritual center for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Temple Square offers free walking tours of the Temple grounds available in forty languages. The area also provides access to one of the most extensive collections of genealogical records in the world and frequent performances by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.”
Andrew Gillman, content and creative manager for the Utah Office of Tourism, says, “I would say that Temple Square specifically is one of the easiest destinations for us to talk about because it’s among the highest profiled visitor destinations related to the church. It’s one of the city’s top attractions. Speaking more broadly, LDS heritage and history is so important to our state, it’s definitely part of our storytelling.”
That storytelling also includes content marketing that touches on religious tourism themes. For a visitutah.com article titled “Temple Square: The Geographical and Musical Heart of Salt Lake,” Gillman explains, “We had an author sit down with Ron Jarrett, Tabernacle Choir president, to get a sense for how he feels the choir at Temple Square ties into the visitor experience. We wanted to show Temple Square as one part of your broader city experience—grab dinner near Temple Square, head down the street for a drink, see a choir concert. It’s all part of the texture of the broader city.”
Tour operators, like Salt Lake City Tours, leverage the appeal of church-related sites in their itineraries as well. “We feature the organ recital on the city tour daily. We also have the choir twice a week when they’re available,” says Michael Williams, manager for Salt Lake City Tours. “The organ is one of the world’s finest instruments, so it’s a showpiece. Because the choir is known worldwide, that’s the one thing in Salt Lake City people would know about, if they know about anything.”
Attracting the religious and the secular
Alongside the marketing efforts of organizations like Visit Salt Lake and the Utah Office of Tourism, the Church also concentrates on bringing the world to its popular events and sites in Utah.
“We are active participants in the Utah Tourism Industry Association. (I sit on that board of directors), and with Visit Salt Lake, and with all of the websites that focus on tourism, like utah.com. We also host the website templesquare.com, and then we collaborate with a bunch of the church organizations, like the Church History Museum, the Conference Center,” says Kris Mecham, director of strategic relations for Temple Square Hospitality, a for-profit subsidiary of the church-owned Deseret Management Corporation.
According to Mecham, Temple Square hosts approximately 3.5 million visitors annually, with the larger 35-acre footprint surrounding Temple Square attracting about 6 million annually. Mecham explained that Temple Square visitation tends to increase during peak seasons: around General Conference in the spring and fall, and in November and December, with the popular Temple Square Lights.
For downtown Salt Lake City hotels, a high volume of visitors to Temple Square and the Conference Center often equates to a high volume of room bookings. Around events like General Conference, Cheryl Rhode, director of sales for The Peery Hotel, part of the Hilton Tapestry Collection, says “We definitely see a spike. I think just anything that draws people in effects all of the downtown properties.”
Temple Square performances are also effective at bringing people downtown, with professional pianists and vocalists from around the world appearing at Temple Square’s Tabernacle and Assembly Hall, and choir performances, religious pageants, and cultural dance performances at the Conference Center. According to Stephen Breinholt, Temple Square performances coordinator, over 200,000 people attended Temple Square performances in 2017—and that’s not counting attendance at Conference Center events or several Christmas performances.
Breinholt, who joined the Temple Square performances team a couple years ago, is working to expand the repertoire with more audience-driven performances. He says, “We’re starting to turn our attention to thinking about daytime performances; that’s most often when people are likely to be on the Square.” In an effort to expand outreach, he explains marketing has gone from internal (primarily flyers in church buildings throughout the region) to external (online and social media marketing). “We just launched an updated events page in July of this year that has digital representation for every performance, so tourists can see all that’s going on.” He adds, “We did some ads for a few events on Facebook and Instagram.”
A little further south, Brigham Young University hosts conferences and events that bring thousands of visitors to the Provo area. “Education Week is a big event in August of every year, drawing between 18,000 to 22,000, depending on the year. Women’s Conference is a large event as well, held in May, that draws roughly 12,000 to 14,000,” says Lee Glines, dean of BYU Continuing Education.
According to Bruce Payne, program administrator for Education Week, the breakdown on attendees for Education Week are as follows: “Traditionally about 60 percent to 65 percent are Utah residents, others are from other states or foreign countries.” Like other religious tourists to the state, they contribute to tourism revenue. “I ride Frontrunner to work, and during Education Week, I see participants who are staying anywhere along the Frontrunner route, staying in area hotels and such, riding public transportation to campus,” says Glines.
Whether coming for spiritual edification, church-related events or just adding a local “religious/ historical attraction” to an otherwise general itinerary, religious tourism is a definite draw. As summarized by Gillman: “When people visit Utah, they know Temple Square. In some regards, if you visit Rome, you go to the Vatican. It’s not at that level in terms of volume of visitation, but the expectation is like when in London, you have to see St. Paul’s Cathedral—Temple Square is such a fabric of the city.”