Leaders at the Minneapolis tourism bureau are riding high after a record-breaking year for hotel bookings in the city, though they acknowledge there hasn’t been a full return to pre-pandemic activity.

Melvin Tennant, president and CEO of local visitors bureau Meet Minneapolis, on Thursday said the city hit an all-time high for “future hotel group nights” booked in 2023. This refers to advanced nights booked for events that Meet Minneapolis secured last year but will occur in 2024 and beyond.

In 2023, the organization recorded a total of 579,000 future hotel nights booked. That was up from 491,000 in the prior year.

At the same time, a slew of events last year drove hotel occupancy close to pre-pandemic records. On June 13 and 23, Minneapolis hotels hit 96.3% occupancy, the highest in 2023. That first date coincided with the USA Volleyball Girls Junior National Championships at the convention center, a Twins-Brewers game, and other events. The second date, of course, coincided with Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” stop in Minneapolis.

Though June 23 marked an all-time high for the total number of hotel rooms booked, the all-time record for overall hotel occupancy is still from a time before Covid. On Oct. 24, 2019, the city hit its remaining record for hotel occupancy at 97.5%.

“We can’t claim that we’ve had full recovery just yet,” Tennant told a crowd gathered at the Minneapolis Convention Center for Meet Minneapolis’s annual meeting on Wednesday. “Our industry still has some challenges that remain, particularly around business travel.”

Still, Tennant and other speakers are optimistic for the year ahead. They rattled off more than a dozen events set to take place in Minneapolis over the next few years.

Speakers are also optimistic about efforts underway to establish a “tourism improvement district” in Minneapolis. It would attach a fee for hotel stays in Minneapolis that would then be used to pay for various citywide marketing efforts.

Minneapolis tourism boosters say they’re ultimately working to reframe narratives around the city. Meet Minneapolis in 2022 tapped local ad agency Periscope to help tell new stories about the city and encourage tourism. Tennant and other boosters argue that it’s beginning to pay off.

Also in 2023, the Minneapolis Convention Center saw its revenue increase by more than 20% to $18.5 million. In total, the center welcomed more than 713,000 visitors at various events throughout the year, according to Meet Minneapolis.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who spoke at the beginning of the meeting, said that the city still has strengths to appeal to visitors. “So many of the assets that we’ve always had,” Frey said, “they’re still here.”