Nearly a million international visitors came to San Jose last year

San Jose may not be as renowned for its food or art as San Francisco, but the nation’s 10th largest city is still a popular draw for more than a million visitors every year.

Andperhaps surprisingly for a city that sees itself as the heart of Silicon Valley, according to a new report, only around one in five overnight visitors comes to San Jose for work. The rest are here to visit family or explore the area for fun.

The report fromTeamSanJose, theorganization that manages the city’s convention center and is in charge of marketing the city to visitors, shows that 935,000 international visitors came to San Jose in 2017, 44 percent of themfrom Mexico. Not quite 10 percent of visitors arrived from Canada and 47 percent arrived from overseas.

More than 50,000 people from China visited the city in 2017, an increase of some 158 percent since 2012. Several years ago, San Jose International Airport added a nonstop to Beijing, part of a broader ongoing push to increase the number of international destinations at one of the nation’s fastest-growing airports. The city also saw a steep rise in visits from India, South Korea, Mexico and Argentina.

“What stands out to me is the amount of international attention,” said Frances Wong, a spokeswoman for Team San Jose.

And, the report says, visitors to San Jose are younger, better educated and wealthier than visitors to the U.S. overall. More than 40 percent of overnight visitors are in the 18-34 age range, and about 30 percent earn at least $100,000 and have a postgraduate degree.

Forty-three percent of potential visitors surveyed in a study by Travelhorizons, referenced in the report, said they’re interested in the region’s outdoor activities, with 42 percent interested in the city for its Silicon Valley location and 39 percent interested in the area’s cultural offerings.

The four theaters managed by Team San Jose — CityNational Civic, California Theatre, Center for the Performing Arts andMontgomery Theater— held 622 performances in 2017, attracting 541,775 peoplewho spent $11.5 million at San Jose businesses.

All told, 1.34 million people visited the city’s convention center and cultural facilities — including the theaters — generating nearly $53 million in revenue. The number of visitors was slightly higher the previous year, when Super Bowl 2016 was held in Santa Clara and San Jose made a major marketing push to bring football fans to the city.

In the coming year, Wong said, Team San Jose wants tomakemore people aware of the art, culture and food the city has to offer.

Lots of convention halls have a reputation for serving “rubber chicken,” Wong said, but not San Jose.

“We have a growing food scene in San Jose,” Wong said. “Lots of locally sourced ingredients.”