Despite the “Great Recession,” a formidable loonie and the lasting image of police cars burning on the city’s streets, 2010 was a record-breaking year for Toronto tourism.

Statistics released Thursday by Tourism Toronto show the city’s hotels rented out more rooms last year than ever before.

The approximate number of “hotel room nights sold” in Toronto in 2010 was 8.93 million, giving the city’s hotels an annual occupancy rate of 68.3 per cent, up 9.7 percentage points from 2009.

Though hotel occupancy rates are just one barometer by which tourism statistics are calculated, they are the key indicator by which such data is judged, says David Whitaker, president and CEO of Tourism Toronto (an industry association that markets Toronto around the world).

“This is the kind of barometer that really matters,” he says.

“The more people who are staying in our hotels translates into more taxi patrons, shoppers, restaurant patrons,” he says.

Toronto has become an increasingly popular destination, judging by these numbers. It now places sixth among North American cities (behind New York City, Oahu Island, San Francisco, Miami and Boston). By comparison, Toronto was 16th in 2006, 13th in 2007 and tenth over the last two years.

All told, Whitaker says tourism brought $4.5 billion in revenue to the city last year.

Roughly 33 per cent of all visitors to Toronto in 2010 came from outside Canadian borders. Visitors from the United States make up the bulk of foreign visitors to the city, followed by visitors from the United Kingdom and China. The vast majority of visitors, however, still come from across Ontario.

And though he’s hesitant to single out any one tourist attraction as being responsible for the increase in visitors, Whitaker concedes the figures do show that the G20 gave a substantial boost to the city’s tourism numbers.

“Clearly June was a tremendous month, regardless of all those other aspects (associated with the G20 summit),” he says. “Most of our hotels were full of either delegates or people working the events.”

Traditionally the best month for tourism is September when the city hosts its annual Toronto International Film Festival. Last year was different. While the September occupancy rate for 2010 was 76.9 per cent (up 2.9 percentage points from 2009), the June occupancy rate was 80 per cent (up 12.8 percentage points from 2009).

On the flip side, January, February and December were all bad months for the city’s hotels. But that’s to be expected. After all, does anybody really come to Toronto to witness what this city calls winter?

Toronto, however, still wasn’t the most expensive city in Canada to rent a room. That honour goes to Vancouver, which hosted the Winter Olympics last February. There, the average daily rate was $151.80 in 2010, making it the second most expensive city in North America in which to rent a room (New York City was the priciest at $232.30 (U.S.)).

By contrast, Toronto’s hotel rooms rented at an average rate $134.80 per night in 2010, making the city the eighth most expensive city in North America in which to rent a room.

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In light of the strong Canadian dollar and the prolonged recession in the U.S., exactly how and why the city remains an attraction to Americans might be puzzling to some.

For his part, Whitaker says that, while the historically weak loonie may have attracted discount travellers in the past, the city has successfully refocused its image as a cultural hub that offers a variety of attractions appealing to “sophisticated urban travellers.”