Marketing efforts resulted in $832 million in visitor spending in Williamsburg area last year
Advertising efforts brought nearly $832 million in trip spending to the Williamsburg area over the course of 10 months, research shows.
On Tuesday, SMARInsights President David Seiferth gave a presentation on the effectiveness of the advertising during January’s Williamsburg Tourism Council meeting.
The Tourism Council invested $11.5 million on ad placements from January through October of last year, ultimately influencing more than 430,000 trips to the Williamsburg area and resulting in $831,993,778 in spending from those trips. That equaled a return of $73 in visitor spending for each $1 invested in advertising.
“The headline here is the $830 million in visitor spending that would not exist if Visit Williamsburg did not exist,” said Victoria Cimino, Visit Williamsburg’s chief executive officer, said during the meeting.
Destination marketing made up just over 88% of the Tourism Council’s expenditures in 2022. The marking efforts of Visit Williamsburg, which promotes the Historic Triangle, include television campaigns, social media campaigns, partnerships with influencers, digital ads and more.
SMARInsights, which provides market insights and research with a focus on travel and tourism research, collected data via an online survey, with a total of 1,701 surveys completed.
The markets surveyed include key areas along the east coast, including Boston, where Visit Williamsburg expanded its marketing efforts to in 2022, and New York, a market that made up more than half of the ad-influenced visitor spending in Williamsburg between Jan.-Oct. 2022. Visit Williamsburg markets to areas around the country.
Ad-influenced trips grew by 39%, and ad-influenced visitor spending more than doubled, according to the data. The growth in average visitor spending was driven to some degree by inflation, but was due more to visitors from New York spending more on their trips.
The Williamsburg Tourism Council is a government organization created by statute through the General Assembly in 2018. As a public body, the council is funded through sales and transient occupancy taxes and budget allocations from Williamsburg, James City County and York County.
The presentation also noted that last year’s advertising reached 10 million households — more than double 2021′s figure of 4.4 million. This is due in part to a 24% media budget increase, which also used American Rescue Plan funding.
Sian Wilkerson, sian.wilkerson@pilotonline.com, 757-342-6616
