San Francisco tourism hit a record in 2019 with its 10th straight year of growth, but major travel disruptions related to the coronavirus could dampen 2020.

The number of business and leisure visitors rose 1.4% to 26.2 million, and spending rose 2.7% to $10.2 billion from the prior year, according to a Thursday report by San Francisco Travel, the city’s tourism bureau. Tourism is the city’s biggest private industry and supports 86,111 jobs, according to the bureau.

“Overall, 2019 was another great year. Internationally, the evolving coronavirus situation and other market conditions make 2020 a difficult year to project,” Joe D’Alessandro, CEO of San Francisco Travel, said in a statement.

San Francisco Travel doesn’t have any estimates on how coronavirus will affect business this year.

“It’s so volatile, and it’s changing on a daily basis,” D’Alessandro said in an interview. “There’s a lot more questions than answers.”

Despite challenges like rising homelessness and expensive hotels, sites like the Golden Gate Bridge and Ferry Building continue drawing visitors.

“The Ferry Building continued to see excellent traffic from tourists in 2019. Whether looking for a quick coffee and breakfast on the go, a special occasion meal with stunning views, or a local souvenir that can’t be found anywhere else, we are proud that the Ferry Building remains a must-stop destination,” said Jane Connors of Hudson Pacific Properties, general manager of the Ferry Building, in a statement.

D’Alessandro said that based on social media activity, visitors have also flocked to neighborhoods that weren’t historically tourist destinations, such as Hayes Valley, Dogpatch, Mission Bay and the Richmond District. New restaurants and boutiques have helped boost those areas.

“Younger visitors are much more interested in venturing out,” he said.

San Francisco Travel is also increasing its social media promotion of Chinatown in the wake of the coronavirus, which has discouraged visitors to the area, despite no reported cases of transmission in San Francisco.

Chinatown is “totally safe,” D’Alessandro said. “Right now it’s hurting.”

An expanded Moscone Center helped attract healthy conference attendance, accounting for 1 million booked room nights during 2019, according to San Francisco Travel. But the city lost one of its largest conferences, Oracle OpenWorld, which is moving out of San Francisco to Las Vegas this year.

This year, Moscone Center’s business has suffered from coronavirus. Facebook canceled a roughly 5,000-person marketing conference scheduled for next month at Moscone. Other major companies like IBM, Verizon and Sony’s PlayStation division have pulled out of other Moscone Center conferences.

The boom in travel helped push hotel rates up last year. San Francisco’s average nightly room rates rose to $276.92 at the end of 2019, up 4.7% compared with the prior year, according to San Francisco Travel. Occupancy rose eight-tenths of a percentage point to 82.9%.

Mark Fraioli, a hotel broker with JLL, said the high cost of hotels didn’t discourage visitors.

“Although hotel rates in San Francisco continue to increase, we are not seeing any resulting decrease in demand,” he said. “Many properties in the city are being upgraded to better meet consumer tastes, and Americans are spending more on luxury services than ever — these factors help account for the continued strength of demand.”

Three hotels with 627 rooms opened in San Francisco in 2019, which was more than in prior years but still not enough to meet demand, said Alan Reay, president of Atlas Hospitality Group, a hotel sales brokerage.

Reay said the impact of the coronavirus on hotels is still unclear.

“It is too early to tell. It depends how quickly it spreads,” Reay said. He expects leisure travelers to put off travel more frequently than business travelers. Any negative impacts would first be seen in occupancy rates, followed by rates dropping, he said.

International visitors accounted for 28.3% of overnight visitors and 61.6% of spending. There were 2.9 million international visitors in 2019, up 1.3% from the prior year, and the top markets were Mexico, China, the United Kingdom, Canada and Germany.

Some popular tourist destinations said coronavirus hasn’t had a noticeable impact.

The de Young and Legion of Honor museums receive around 500,000 tourist visitors each year, out of 1.4 million total visitors.

“We have not seen a noticeable change in these numbers since the outbreak of the coronavirus,” said Miriam Newcomer, director of communications at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which operates the two museums.

Roland Li is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: roland.li@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rolandlisf