The Downtown Project: Tourism

Welcome to the Downtown Project. This is a four-part series on the part of our city that makes Memphis Memphis.

We started this series with one simple question: How is Downtown doing? That question became important because perceptions of Downtown Memphis — and downtowns everywhere, we discovered — were not exactly positive.

Narratives emerged: Covid drained the office workers from Downtown Memphis. The downstream effects of that hit restaurants, events, stores, and more. Another narrative held that violent crime had gotten so bad in Downtown Memphis that people — especially tourists — just refused to go there anymore.

The trouble with these narratives was that they were only partly true. But these same narratives have been partly true in almost every downtown in America, according to the Brookings Institution.

Yet crime continues to recede across Memphis and the country. Turns out the bulk of those tourists never really left. And while downtown office markets remain softer than pre-pandemic levels, they — and the money they involve — are making a slow, slight, frustrating comeback.

Brookings suggests that the downtowns we remember may never return.

“There is no going back in time to 2019,” the think tank says in a report.

Instead, Brookings says downtowns need to adapt. But how?

The Downtown Project will focus on these issues, examining the above questions and the general health of Downtown in terms of its office and residential sectors, as well as tourism, retail, restaurants, and parking. And we’ll unpack the Downtown Memphis Commission’s three-year plan for Downtown’s next chapter. — Toby Sells

How Are We Doing?

Tourism in Downtown Memphis is still strong, but — like other peer cities — it’s stalled for the moment. Yet there are signs of renewal.

Millions of tourists still pack Beale Street, FedExForum events still draw big crowds, and Memphis continues to generate billions in visitor spending. Yet Downtown hotels and others are still adjusting to the same post-pandemic realities reshaping downtowns across America.

“We got hit like a lot of cities got hit,” said Kevin Kane, president and CEO of Memphis Tourism. “It started in mid-2023, continued through 2024, and continued through most of 2025. But — thank God — we’re seeing a turnaround.

“Now, is $4-a-gallon gas going to impact that this summer? I don’t know. We don’t know. There are a lot of things we don’t know. But the trend is going in the right direction.”

Here are the high notes: Tourism in Shelby County has brought in a record-high $4.3 billion, according to state data from 2024. While hotel data suggests tourism softened here (and certainly Downtown) last year and may continue the slump into 2027, Memphis Tourism has signaled better months recently, pointing to big, new developments Downtown (like the Memphis Art Museum) as new reasons for people to visit there.

Those are the biggest tea leaves pointing us to our conclusion about tourism Downtown: It’s strong, stalled, but showing signs of renewal. Kane approved that conclusion.

As we drill into the facts here, you’ll find it’s a mixed bag of harsh realities and bright optimism for tourism. You’ll find, too, that Downtown Memphis is pretty much in the same boat as peer cities.

Through it all, though, one fact remains: People from across the globe still want to come here and see what Memphis is all about (as hard as that may seem to the ordinary Midtowner).

Memphis’ Tourism Capital

Stroll the aisles of the Midtown Home Depot any Saturday afternoon and you may not automatically think of Memphis as a tourist hotspot.

Workaday Memphians plop eight-pack paper towels and loops of garden hoses into their carts. A dull speaker overhead reminds somebody to pick up a service call on line one. Fashions range from a spackled, pro-painter look to a sweaty DIYer interrupted by that one piece they need.

Travel west on that same weekend afternoon and, like Dorothy first opening the door to Oz, color fills a different land of dreamy dreams.

Neon beckons from a thousand bars and shops. Soul music uplifts. Blues music gets lowdown. Promises of fried food and barbecue scent the air. Drinks are “big ass.” Elvis is there. B.B., too.

A group in matching T-shirts snap a selfie in front of the Beale Street sign. A couple sips green cocktails from lanyards strapped around their necks. Children point and laugh at an Irish Diving Goat. Men wear full brim hats they ordinarily would not. (You can just tell.) Women get bold in striking colors or show more skin than they would back home.

A quiet majority of Memphians never go to Beale Street. They don’t have to brag about it like they do with Graceland. To most, Beale Street is just not a thing.

Yet every year, millions walk the “most iconic street in America,” as it was once named. They travel hours and hours just to look upon (and drink upon and boogie upon) this fabled street and — still, yes — to walk with their feet “10 feet off of Beale.” (Check hashtags for receipts.)

Beale Street is the capital of Memphis tourism. Period. The street attracted around 5 million in 2023, according to a figure published by the Memphis Business Journal. Visitors in years past has made Beale Street one of Tennessee’s most visited attractions, if not the most visited.

Finding Facts

Beale Street alone makes Downtown the county seat of regional tourism. Other anchors there — Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid, the National Civil Rights Museum, FedExForum, and more — cement this idea. They all create the postcard version of Memphis.

Since that is where most tourists are, numbers on Memphis tourism at large translate into the health of Downtown tourism. So we started there in our research and reporting, though no solid data exist to prove it completely. 

“Downtown is not the entire tourism economy, but it’s a centerpiece of the tourism economy,” said Kevin Kern, vice president of public relations for Memphis Tourism.

So, checking the vitals on the health of Downtown tourism is not easy and not an exact science. There is no dashboard showing how many people walked down Beale Street last weekend, slept in a Downtown hotel, visited the National Civil Rights Museum, rode electric scooters to dinner, then caught a Grizzlies game before leaving town the next morning.

We used a mix of reports from the state of Tennessee, Memphis Tourism, visitor counts from attractions (where they were available), the Downtown Memphis Commission (DMC), hotel data from the Metropolitan Memphis Hotel and Lodging Association (MMHLA), national data, and city data from Birmingham and Louisville. 

Peer City Comparison

That brings us to another point.

Downtown Birmingham and Louisville are close comparisons to Downtown Memphis. Not perfect. But close, as far as comparisons go.

They are all mid-sized Southern cities. Their Downtowns pack an economic punch for the entire region. They are also core to their city’s civic identity.

In all three cities, Downtown is home to city halls and courtrooms, corporate headquarters and offices, thousands of homes, bars, restaurants, stores, convention halls, hotels, green space, and major event venues.

More specifically, each city’s Downtown is home to its major arena — FedExForum in Memphis, Legacy Arena at the BJCC in Birmingham, and the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville. Also, the Downtowns in each are nurtured by a quasi-governmental nonprofit — the Downtown Memphis Commission, the Louisville Downtown Partnership, and Downtown BHM.   

We’ll compare these three cities throughout this series. Again, we know it’s not perfect. But Birmingham and Louisville are closer in comparison for these measurements than, say, Little Rock, Nashville, or New Orleans, even though Memphis shares much with them all.

Stay Awhile

Hotel stays give a clean vital sign to the health of Downtown tourism. And it’s here where the doctor would raise an eyebrow.

A 2026 lodging industry report prepared for the Metropolitan Memphis Hotel & Lodging Association shows the city’s hotel market under pressure, with Downtown among the places feeling it most. Memphis hotel occupancy in 2025 fell to 58.6 percent, down from 61.7 percent in 2024 and 64.7 percent in 2023. The report described that level as “not seen since 2011,” excluding the pandemic years. 

The problem was not just one soft pocket of the city. Demand was down “across the entire metro area,” according to the report. But the Downtown figures stand out because Downtown is where Memphis has placed its biggest tourism bets: the Renasant Convention Center, Beale Street, FedExForum, the riverfront and Tom Lee Park, museums, theaters, shops, restaurants, and the hotels built to serve them. In the report’s submarket comparisons, Downtown fell a little harder than other areas of town.

So, how do we compare to Birmingham and Louisville? They’re in roughly the same boat, though Memphis has been hit a little harder.

Hotel demand is how many rooms are booked versus the overall amount of rooms we have. If we have 1,000 rooms and 100 are booked, that’s 10 percent demand.

Demand grew a modest 1 percent in Birmingham last year. But growth is growth. Louisville basically broke even. Demand in Memphis fell 3 percent, while it fell 6 percent in New Orleans.

Occupancy is the raw data on how many rooms are booked. Both Birmingham and Louisville lost less than 1 percent of occupancy last year. Same as Nashville and Knoxville. Memphis lost a little more than 3 percent. New Orleans lost more than 4 percent.

“We did see that all of a sudden, like a lot of cities have seen, that Downtown wasn’t the occupancy leader,” Kane said. “Our Downtown hotels, as a result, felt that.”

Temper any dire notions about these figures, though. Memphis added about 1,000 hotel rooms right around Covid, nearly a 25 percent increase in inventory, slightly more than Birmingham or Louisville.   

Hotel stays are down in Memphis and across the South. They’re down nationally, too. Experts point to general consumer spending pressure. Stuff just costs more and folks are staying home. Whether experts say so specifically or not, much of those cost pressures run straight from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. 

Any Given Saturday

Beale Street bustled.

The University of Memphis graduation had just let out at FedExForum on a recent Saturday. Well-dressed family and cap-and-gown grads streamed out all over the plaza, pausing for photos, hugs, smiles, congratulations, and thank yous.

Traffic was slow to an almost gridlock situation. (Though everyone was polite about it.) Parking at the Peabody Place garage was $23. Sidewalk traffic surged. The sky was clear. The temperature perfect.   

Outside Silky O’Sullivan’s, a group studied the menu posted by the door. A woman busked “Lodi” into a CB mic for passersby. Even though the street was closed to vehicles, the throng of visitors stuck to the sidewalks. There, they paused to smoke, sip beers, and generally look up and down this Beale Street they’d heard so much about.

Inside the Memphis Music store, an older German couple chuckled at some “Jailhouse Rock” socks. Over at Strange Cargo, an American couple chuckled at an Elvis clock. Presley’s hips swung out the seconds. Excited kids filled candy bags at Beale Sweets Sugar Shack.

It was all a fascinating look inside a world those Home Depot Midtowners likely rarely see. In a city that loves to be its own worst critic, visitors — a ton of visitors — were having the time of their lives in a place they almost could not believe was real.

“People don’t think about Beale Street as a place that you can just come and bring your family and hang out and have brunch on a Sunday morning with your girlfriends, but it is,” said Megan May, vice president of Backbeat Tours. “It’s Beale Street, and it always has been for everybody.”

Downtown is central to Backbeat’s business, May said. Beale Street, in particular, is what Buckingham Palace is to London, she said, what The Gateway Arch is to St. Louis. While she noted that graduation had just let out, she said Beale Street is packed every single Saturday.

Asked what might surprise a typical Memphian about tourists to our town, May said, “The number one thing I hear from tourists from all over the world is that Memphis has the nicest people. I love hearing it. We’re all just so friendly.”

Off of Beale, Clark Schifani says tourists to Downtown Memphis are a lifeblood for Old Dominick Distillery. As Old Dominick’s sales director, Schifani sees this up close. On any given weekend, he said, around 80 percent of guests at Old Dominick are tourists.

Ten years in, Schifani said Downtown tourism has “completely changed.” 

“It’s still similar, the elements are still there — culture, music, art, people — but the attractions have kind of really grown around the staples,” he said, pointing to growth in The Edge, parts of Main Street, and South Main. “Being in the alcohol space — like all the bars that are serving Old Dominick — that’s always a plus for us.”

Asked what might surprise a typical Memphian about tourists to our town, Schifani said, “They’re shocked at how many Memphians have not been to Graceland. They’re blown away at that.”   

What’s Next?

Tourism in Memphis was good last fall and early winter, Kern said. Numbers were up over last year in January, February, and March, Kern said, and that “April felt good to a lot of people.” 

One of those people was Kane.

“If you were Downtown on St. Patrick’s Day … it was as close to anything we saw pre-2019,” he said. “I mean, Memphis looked back.

“We had the Savannah Banana baseball team here. We had a big convention. We had Beale Street going. There was something at The Orpheum. Everyone was having a great time and I said, ‘My God, man. Now, this feels like Memphis. This feels like Downtown Memphis.’”

There’s more to come. And that’s partly why The New York Times called Memphis one of the best 52 places to visit this year.

The new, $180 million Memphis Art Museum is set to open this December at Front and Union, bringing a brand new reason for visitors to go Downtown.

The transformed Tom Lee Park — a roughly $61 million, 31-acre riverfront redevelopment — continues to transform. Opening this summer, the Memphis Flyway will bring another dimension to Tom Lee and yet another reason for visitors to go Downtown. Located at the park’s southern edge, the free, ADA-accessible observation deck extends over the Mississippi River for never-before-seen views of the water and wildlife.

The National Civil Rights Museum recently reopened its expanded and reimagined “Legacy Experience,” featuring immersive exhibits tracing the civil rights movement from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination to the present day. The project also includes upgrades to the museum’s Legacy Building and the revamped Founders Park, part of a broader modernization effort tied to the museum’s 35th anniversary.

Finally, if you’re LeBron James looking for an upscale stay Downtown, look no further than The Peabody Memphis. The hotel recently completed a $19 million renovation of its 464 guest rooms as part of a larger, $130 million modernization plan.