The number of visitors to Greater Des Moines in 2009 remained strong, but the dollars spent by those visitors dropped slightly, the Greater Des Moines Convention and Visitors Bureau said. The metro area hosted more than 2.9 million visitors who spent nearly $1.5 billion in Polk and Dallas counties, according to the Economic Impact of Travel Study released by the Iowa Department of Economic Development’s Iowa Tourism Office. This makes up one quarter of Iowa’s $6.1 billion in travel expenditures. “We anticipated the number of visitors to remain strong, based off of the number of event bookings we had throughout 2009,” Greater Des Moines Convention and Visitors Bureau President and CEO Greg Edwards said in a news release. Polk County travel expenditures were at more than $1.3 billion in 2009, while Dallas County brought in just under $130 million. The state’s total visitor expenditures were down 5.5 percent from 2008.