The sum of it all? People sure get around. Go figure.

WITH all those circling airplanes, ever-bigger cruise ships and mega-hotels, it’s apparent that travel is a big industry. But how big?

To find out, I tracked down statistics, both serious and whimsical, that illuminate humanity on the go. Many of the numbers are from the Travel Industry Assn. of America, or TIA, a nonprofit industry group based in Washington, D.C., that promotes travel.

Here are a few of the figures:

* 1.3 trillion: The travel industry’s annual dollar contribution to the U.S. economy in 2004, according to the TIA.

This is a generous estimate, to be sure, because it counts not only money paid for airfare, hotel stays and other travel but also trickle-down effects. These include so-called induced expenditures -- basically, how industry employees spend their wages.

But even direct spending on travel in the U.S., which the TIA listed as $599 billion in 2004, is impressive.

* 99.4 billion: The tax revenue in dollars to local, state and federal governments in the U.S. generated by travelers’ spending in 2004, according to the TIA.

* 43.3 million: Visitors that New York City expects to host this year, according to NYC & Co., a private nonprofit group that markets tourism for the Big Apple. That figure, 4.5% more than in 2005, would be a record.

The city claims to be the No. 1 destination for foreigners, with a 27% share of the U.S. market for such visits. Nearly 329,000 of the city’s jobs are in the travel and tourism industry, accounting for 6.8% of the employment base.

* 818,700: Jobs in California that were generated by the travel industry in 2003 -- the most of any U.S. state, the TIA reported.

* 72 billion: The dollars spent by visitors to California in 2003.

* 306 million: People who have boarded Pirates of the Caribbean boats at Disneyland since the ride opened in 1967. More than 500 million people have passed through the gates of the Anaheim theme park since it opened in 1955.

* 1,027.5: Times per day, on average, that Disneyland plays the 48-second song “It’s a Small World” on the ride of the same name. That’s not counting “all the times the cast members play it when the park is closed,” said Disney spokesman John McClintock. In case you wondered: You hear the song an average of 15.6 times on each ride.

* 276.9 million: Recreational visits to national parks in the U.S. in 2004. Although nearly 11 million more than the 2003 figure, it was still short of the record: 287.1 million in 1999. One reason for the lag is that after the Sept. 11 attacks, fewer international visitors arrived, said David Barna, National Park Service spokesman.

* 79 million: Americans who went online in 2005 to get travel and destination information -- 37% of the U.S. adult population, the TIA says.

* 3.5 billion: The dollars consumers spent online for travel from Jan. 1 to 20 this year, according to comScore Networks of Reston, Va., which tracks this data. Travel purchases accounted for nearly 39% of consumers’ total online spending in that period, the firm reported.

* 8 million: The number of scones you could make with the amount of sugar consumed in one year aboard the Queen Mary 2, the world’s largest cruise ship, according to Cunard Line. The ship serves enough tea each year to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool, which is about 164-by-82 feet.

Carrying up to 3,090 passengers, the Queen Mary 2, which is expected to arrive Wednesday in San Pedro, is 1,132 feet long and occupies 151,400 gross registered tons (a measure of volume, not weight). Its guests can work off their scones, if they wish, by climbing the 5,000 stairs onboard.

But the cruise industry’s trend toward upsizing ensures that the queen will soon lose her crown.

In June, Royal Caribbean International is scheduled to sail an even bigger ship, the 160,000-ton Freedom of the Seas. It can carry up to 4,375 passengers.

Both ships are expected to be dwarfed by an as-yet unnamed ship that Royal Caribbean has ordered for delivery in 2009 from Aker Yards, a shipbuilder in Oslo. At 220,000 gross registered tons, it will be able to carry up to 6,400 passengers.

* 52,670: Gallons of fuel burned by a Boeing 777-200LR in November when it set the world record for the longest distance traveled nonstop by a commercial airplane, according to Boeing. The jet took 22 hours and 42 minutes to cover 13,422 statute miles, flying east from Hong Kong to London.

It logged 0.255 miles per gallon. But you could also figure the mileage at 8.9 “people-miles per gallon,” taking into account that 35 passengers were on the historic flight, said Boeing spokeswoman Debbie Heathers.

The first of the 777-200LR jets is scheduled to be delivered to Pakistan International Airlines later this month.

For now, the longest nonstop commercial flight in scheduled service is still Singapore Airlines’ daily Singapore-to-New York route, which covers 10,300 statute miles and takes 18 hours.

* 136,540: Mai tai drinks served last year at the 2,860-room Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki, according to Gary Manago, the resort’s director of food and beverage. Each year, officials estimate, 2 million people stay at the resort, which, based on room count, is the biggest in Hawaii.

* 1,655,072: Prohibited items that U.S. airport screeners intercepted from travelers in December, according to the federal Transportation Security Administration. The most common categories were knives and scissors.

* 500 million: Gallons of water converted into snow in an average year at Hunter Mountain in Hunter, N.Y., which claims to have the largest snow-making capacity per acre of any U.S. ski resort. Hunter used more than 1,100 machines to coat its entire 240 acres of skiable Catskills terrain with the white stuff.

* 1.16 billion: Total so-called person-trips that Americans took in 2004, according to the TIA. One person-trip equals one person taking one trip 50 miles or more from home or staying one or more nights away from home.

More than 80% of this travel was for pleasure, and the rest was for business.

* 12: Average number of vacation days that U.S. workers were allotted in 2005, according to a Harris Interactive survey commissioned by Expedia.com, the Internet travel seller.

By contrast, the French average 39 days of vacation; the Germans, 27 days; the Dutch, 25; the British, 23; and the Canadians, 20, according to the online poll of a cross-section of 9,926 adults in the six nations.

According to the numbers, we Americans manage to pack a lot of travel into less than two weeks’ time.

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Jane Engle welcomes comments but can’t respond individually to letters and calls. Write to Travel Insider, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A., CA 90012, or e-mail jane.engle@latimes.com.