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Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us for a deep dive into AOT’s data for the West Coast Region. This webinar will cover regional data from our 2017 economic impact report as well as your region’s visitor profile.

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My name is Kari Roberg, and I’m the Research Manager at AOT. Myself and Colleen Floyd, our Director of Research, are both always available for questions, so please feel free to reach out anytime. During the presentation, if you have a question, please type it in to the Chat function, and we will address them at the end.

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Today we’ll start with a very brief review of our statewide numbers. Then we will dive into the economic impact of tourism on your region and show you how to mine this information even deeper to make compelling arguments to your funding entity or stakeholders. We will review year-to-date indicators, spending data, and regional profiles. We really want to emphasize: THIS RESEARCH IS FOR YOU. This webinar is intended to empower you with the ability to make strong, research-driven arguments and decisions. These slides, along with my talking points, will be posted on tourism.az.gov in the next few days, so don’t feel like you have to write down every detail.

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A quick note about where our data comes from. Most of this presentation focuses on data provided by Longwoods International and Dean Runyan Associates. Longwoods gives us the “who came here” and Dean Runyan Associates gives us “how much did they spend”. We also use data from Visa to understand how international visitors are spending, and rely on Northern Arizona University to collect indicator data on parks visitation, gross sales, and airport deplanement data.

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So let’s get started with the impact of travel in the West Coast Region which includes La Paz, Mohave and Yuma Counties.

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You can find the Arizona Travel Impacts reports on our tourism.az.gov website. Click the button for Economic Impact, and on that page you will find the pdf report. The report offers quite a bit of analysis and some great information on the structure of the US and Arizona tourism economies. Farther down the page, you will find a link to the online data tool. This tool allows you to download graphs or data in Excel. The data is also available as a mobile app, and the links to download it from the Apple Store or Google Play are at the very bottom of the page. We refresh the data in this app after the Governor’s Conference on Tourism every year, and you can see the breakdowns by state, region, county, and legislative district.

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In 2017, Arizona welcomed 43.9 million visitors to the state. This included 38.3 million domestic visitors and 5.56 million international visitors. Those visitors spent an estimated 22.7 billion dollars in the state.

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The West Coast Region welcomed 6.1 million domestic overnight visitors in 2017. Those combined with international visitors spent 1.36 billion dollars in direct spending.

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That $1.36 billion in visitor spending in the West Coast Region led to $114 million in state and local tax revenues, supported over 14,800 jobs, and those jobs earned an estimated $383 million. All of these increased compared to 2016. Direct Spending had a healthy 7.1% increase and state and local taxes were up 9.6%.

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Here we are looking at how those impacts break down by county. All counties in the region had a healthy increase in visitor spending. State and local tax revenue increased as well. It was up 10% in La Paz County, up 12% in Mohave and up 5% in Yuma County.   Visitors to the West Coast Region relieve a substantial tax burden for residents. In La Paz County, visitors contributed $1,260 in state and local tax revenue per household, $600 in Mohave County, $740 in Yuma. So those are dollars residents did not have to pay in taxes for the same level of government services.

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Here we have a graph detailing historical direct spending going back to 2000. Direct spending in billions is represented by the blue bars, and the year over year percent change is represented by the green line. Any green point above the 0% on the right indicates spending growth that year. The region has only had a few years of negative growth. The dip you see in 2015 and 2016 largely had to do with gas prices. And it’s encouraging to see the upswing in 2017.

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So when we look at what visitors are spending their money on and how that is changing from year to year, spending in all categories has increased over 2016. Food service makes up 26% of spending in the region, and that is followed by spending on arts, entertainment and recreation. Accommodations account for 14% of visitor spending in the region.

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Breaking that spending down by county, in La Paz arts/entertainment/recreation is the number one commodity in terms of visitor spending, and that is followed by food service and retail sales.

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In Mohave County, 31% of visitor spending is on food service, and that is followed by arts/entertainment/recreation and accommodations.

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In Yuma County spending on food service is slightly higher than spending on arts/entertainment/recreation. And retail accounts for nearly 19% of spending.

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It’s helpful to understand what segments of visitors spend the most. So here we are looking at total spending based on type of accommodation used. A note, there was an addition made to the hotel/motel category in 2017 – short-term vacation rental is now included in the hotel/motel category.   In La Paz County spending from those who stay in hotel, motel, or short-term vacation rental contribute about 9% of overall spending and day travelers account for 45% of spending. Campers bring in 22% of spending. In Mohave County, those staying in private homes contribute 32% of visitor spending and that is followed by spending by those that stay in hotel/motel/short-term vacation rental. Day travelers account for 26% of spending. Looking at Yuma County, day travelers contribute 36% of total visitor spending and hotel/motel/STVR guests contribute 28%. So both day travelers and overnight visitors are important to the region.

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Speaking of short-term vacation rentals being added to the hotel/motel category, we recently purchased a report from AllTheRooms to dip our toes into short-term vacation rentals data so we wanted to share some of that with you. On the next few slides we’ll be looking at information regarding Airbnb listings in the state and region. There are 34,000 Airbnb listings in Arizona as of August 2018, 51% of which were active when the report was pulled. Most are listing entire homes, as opposed to private or shared rooms.

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Here’s a look at how those listings map out around the state. As would be expected, the metropolitan areas have the highest density of listings. But it’s nice to see some rural representation as well.

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Focusing in on the West Coast Region, there are 70 listings in La Paz County, 646 in Mohave County, and 95 in Yuma County. And only one of those is a listing for a shared room. At any given time of the year the number of active properties will vary, as some may only be available for rent seasonally or select weeks of the year. As I’m sure many of you are aware, Airbnb is not the dominant short-term vacation rental company in all areas or regions of the state, but this starts to give us a look at the number of rentals and we know that many short-term vacation renters will list on multiple sites.

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In this section, we’ll take a look at year-to-date tourism indicators for 2018. These tourism indicators are tracked monthly on the Data and Trends page of the Research section of our website.

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State park visitation in the West Coast Region is outpacing 2017 when we look at visitation from January-June of this year. On the left we’re looking at visitation from January-June, comparing 2018 and 2017, for the state parks in the region. On the bottom right of the slide we see year-to-date visitation for each park in the region and percent change over the previous year. Visitation in January nearly doubled. May was the only month that saw a decrease in visitation. From January – June state park visitation was up 13%.

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Looking at national park visitation, Lake Mead has not reported in for June yet so we’re looking at January through May for Lake Mead and Pipe Spring. January visitation was up 10%, February and March nearly identical in 2017 and 2018, April visitation was down, but May rose 31% over 2017. Overall visitation for those months was up 8%. I also wanted to note that the formula for Lake Mead visitation changed this year and is reflected in 2017 numbers used here, but if you’re on our website looking at previous years do know those used a different formula.

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Airport volume from January to June is up for the region. That reflects flights from Laughlin/Bullhead City International and Yuma International. January had a 14% increase in passenger volume. May and June were down slightly.

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Looking at the trend line for lodging data, we’ve broken it out by county. In La Paz County, occupancy was up 1.3% from January-July. And supply was up 13% so it’s great to see there was still an increase in occupancy. ADR was up 5.2% which resulted in revenue per available room being up 6.6%.

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In Mohave County, occupancy was down slightly -0.9% from January through July of this year compared to 2017. ADR was down just -0.3% so RevPAR was down -1.2%.

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Looking at Yuma County, occupancy was up 4.9%. Supply was down about -1.4%. ADR was up 6.3%, so RevPAR had a nice increase of 11.4%.

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The gross sales data we have is for the state, but Northern Arizona University keeps track of gross sales by county in four sectors: lodging, restaurant/bar, retail and amusement. If you’re interested you can peruse that data at the following link.

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Lastly for this section, the U.S. Travel Association provides a monthly overview of the state of the economy, and domestic and international travel to and within the U.S. While it’s not specific to Arizona or your region, it is a valuable resource to gage the state of the travel industry nationally. They recently reported consumer confidence is high. Near an 18-year high in fact. Consumer spending and business investment are growing. International travel to the U.S. is growing, however, the rate of growth is slowing and not keeping pace with the growth of global travel. Domestic travel is outpacing international travel’s rate of growth. It’s reported that nearly nine in 10 lodging searches from U.S. residents were for travel within the U.S. which is significantly higher than recent years. If you haven’t taken a look, their monthly Travel Trends Index measures the direction and pace of travel volume to and within the United States. The most recent month (currently August) is available for download, but previous months are only available to members.

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In this section we’ll look at domestic overnight visitor expenditure data for the region, which is produced by Longwoods International. And here we are looking at 2017 data.

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In the West Coast Region, average per person expenditures on domestic overnight trips for 2017 totaled $188, lodging being the highest expenditure.

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Per Party spending is estimated at $582.

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Now let’s move on to international visitor spending. We purchase Visa card spending data to get a sense of what countries international spending is coming from, where the spending is happening and when, and also the merchant segments with the most spending. Keep in mind, this is Visa card spending only. Some countries use Visa more than others, some prefer other methods of payment. The purpose in sharing this data is to give an overview of what markets are likely the most important and watching how that spending is changing over time.

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Canadian visitors make up more than half of international Visa card spending in the West Coast Region. Mexico follows, but makes up a much smaller share of international spending at 12.5%. Germany was the third highest spender in 2017.

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Here we’re looking at the trend in spending by country from 2008 to 2017. We’ll concentrate on Canada and Mexico with this slide. After a few years of significant decreases, Canadian spending was up 12% from 2016 to 2017. Spending from Mexican visitors increased 8% from 2016 to 2017.

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Here we’re looking at the same data, but have removed Canada and Mexico so we can focus in on the other top spending countries. Spending from the UK as well as China decreased from 2016 to 2017. However, spending from Germany was up 19%, Australia was up 20%, and Spain was up over 40% in Visa spending for the region.

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Here we break down spending for your top international markets by calendar quarter, so you can see which seasons perform best. Again, we’ll concentrate on Canada and Mexico on this slide. Q1, January-March, is huge for Canadian visitors. They obviously like to visit in the cooler months, as we see spending is relatively high in Q4 and a drop occurs in Q2 and Q3. Spending from Mexico increases each quarter and peaks in Q4 the holiday shopping months of October to December.

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And here again we’ll focus in on the other top spending countries – Germany, China, the UK and France. There are obvious spikes in Q3, July to September, so they don’t mind the warmer months. Spending from Germany and France is noticeably lower in Q1.

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So we divided the total Visa card spending by the number of cardholders in the market to see what the average spending per cardholder is. Travelers from Canada are by far spending the most on average in the region. This is followed by spending from Mexico and the UK.

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So let’s take a look at how these Visa card holders are spending their money in the region. Canadian visitors are spending on supermarkets and other retail (which is largely spending on home supply and auto service). Similarly, Mexican visitors are spending on supermarkets and other retail. But other retail for visitors from Mexico is mostly family clothing. Visitors from Germany are spending on other travel and entertainment, which for them largely consists of spending on tourist attractions. 17% of their spending is on lodging. And nearly half of Visa spending from visitors from China is on travel and entertainment which again mostly consists of tourist attractions.

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We have Visa spending data for Q1 and Q2 2018 for the region. There are positive increases in spending from Mexico and Canada when comparing year-over-year. Germany and the UK had growth in Q1 and slightly decreased In Q2. China is the only country with two quarters of declines in spending.

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And now we’re going to look at profiles of domestic overnight visitors to the West Coast Region, which is compiled by Longwoods International.

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79% of overnight visitors to the region are non-residents and 21% are Arizona residents. As is common throughout the state, leisure visitors make up the majority of visitors – 90% of your visitors are leisure visitors.

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This is the only region in the state where a state other than Arizona brings in the most visitors. 33% of visitors originate from California. And that is followed by Arizona. Other top states of origin include Florida, Texas, New York and Illinois.

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20% of visitors are from Los Angeles as of 2017. Phoenix accounts for 18% of visitors. San Diego and New York are also top DMA’s of origin.

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Overall, visitors are very satisfied with their trip experience. And keep in mind this is only those who responded Very Satisfied – so 77% indicated being very satisfied with their trip experience. This region of the state ranks the highest in satisfaction for music/nightlife/entertainment.

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86% have visited the West Coast Region previously. And 71% visited in the last 12 months, which is the highest of all the regions in the state. If anyone is comparing that to previous years’ data, the wording on that question changed so you will see a difference there.

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Most visitors to the West Coast Region take 1 month or less to plan their trips. Keep in mind the visitors that come from farther away are likely to take more time in planning.

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20% are using auto club/AAA as an information source. Your visitors are also using travel agents and hotel/resort as information sources.

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Similarly, visitors are booking through travel agents and auto clubs, and directly through hotels or resorts.

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This slide is a little busy, but it’s interesting to compare Nights Spent between the five regions of the state. 1 night stays are the most popular in the West Coast Region. The average stay is 3.2 nights.

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Party size on average is 3.1 which along with the Northern Region is the largest in the state.

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70% of visitors to the region are using their own vehicle and 23% are renting a car.

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18% are flying in. Interesting that use of taxi is higher than plane. It’s quite unique to the region.

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35% of visitors to the West Coast Region are staying in resort hotel and 28% in motel.

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So here we’re looking at activities visitors actually participated in during their trip. Shopping is number one. Casino and swimming are also popular activities. Fishing is quite popular here compared to other regions of the state.

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And in this slide we’re looking at activities visitors are interested in. Historic places is number one, followed by cultural activities/attractions.

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And we’ll finish with a look at demographics. About 70% of travelers to the region are male, that far exceeds the state average.

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The average age of visitors to the region is 39, younger than the state average.

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Your visitors tend to be married – 71%.

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Three members in household is the most common household size.

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Average household income is $68,420 – higher than the state average.

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Visitors to the region tend to have children under 18 in household, more so than the state average.

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Your visitors are educated – 60% have a college or post-graduate degree.

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And lastly, 65% of your visitors are full-time employed, higher than the state average.

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That wraps up the data we have to present today. As a reminder we, as well as the rest of the AOT team, are here for you so please reach out any time. Our contact information is listed here. And Colleen and I are happy to answer any questions you may have now – type them into the Chat function. We also welcome hearing your feedback and what trends you are seeing as you are the folks on the ground. Thank you!