Hillsborough County was hit hard by the nationwide decline in travel last year. Yet 2009 brought a few odd wrinkles.

The number of visitors dropped by 1 million, or 6.2 percent, from a year earlier. But 15 million people who did come spent $2.9 billion - about 7 percent more - than visitors did in 2008. Fewer visitors flew in from St. Louis and Chicago. More drove from Wesley Chapel.

"I just hope 2009 was a freak year,'' said Mark Bonn, a Florida State University professor who conducts visitor research for Tampa Bay & Co., the county's quasi-public tourism agency.

Overall, the picture for Hillsborough's tourism last year was bleak. The average hotel room rate plummeted to $92.60, down 10.7 percent from 2008. Average hotel occupancy was 53 percent, the lowest in recent memory.

There was a bright spot: cruise passengers. Nearly 974,000 visitors took cruises from Tampa's port, up 1.1 percent from a year earlier. "The cruise lines have figured it out,'' Bonn said. "You've got to create value through packaging" vacations.

Pinellas County didn't take as bad a hit in visitors last year, with a decline of 200,000, or just under 4 percent. But tourism expenditures fell 5 percent to $3.1 billion.

It's hard to compare the two counties because unlike Pinellas, Hillsborough counts visitors who don't spent a night in the county.

Most forecasters predict business at hotels in large cities will stabilize by year's end and show single-digit growth in 2011, Bonn told a group from local tourism-related businesses. "It's going to be a protracted, slower recovery,'' he said. "But it's coming back.''

Steve Huettel can be reached at huettel@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3384.