People swarmed into northern New York and Vermont to view Monday’s solar eclipse and officials are now tallying the economic impact the visitors had on the region.
Most of the current data on the number of visitors and their spending is preliminary or anecdotal as information continues to be gathered.
The Adirondack Coast Visitors Bureau, a division of the North Country Chamber of Commerce, estimates 200,000 people came to the Clinton County region and about a half-million throughout the Adirondacks.
Vice President of Marketing Kristy Kennedy says preliminary estimates are based on sales reports from businesses and hotel bookings.
“We know that there was an influx here. We know a lot of our restaurants and our hoteliers had some of the best days they’ve had on record,” Kennedy notes. “But as far as solid numbers and really being able to quantify what took place this weekend, we are letting travelers kind of continue to explore the area. We know they’re here probably for the next few days and after that we are going to really drill into the numbers.”
Burlington, Vermont was also in the path of totality. Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce Vice President of Tourism and Marketing Jeff Lawson says businesses were a lot busier than usual at this time of year.
“I think there’s not a business owner who was open over the weekend or Monday who wouldn’t tell you that they were pretty busy and certainly would tell you they were busier than your average early April weekend in Vermont,” says Lawson. “For us it’s really important to note that the eclipse landed at a time of year where our visitor economy is traditionally quite slow. Whereas the ski resorts might still see some spring skiing activity, down here in the Champlain Valley things tend to be pretty quiet in April and November. So it was remarkably good fortune that the eclipse happened when it did let alone that we had incredible weather for it. So while we don’t have hard numbers overall we’re feeling pretty darned good about the way things went.”
Burlington Business Association Executive Director Kelly Devine says the city met its expectations for visitation with all hotel rooms booked and higher than usual April activity in the downtown.
“What we will use to better understand the economic impact is two key pieces of data which is sales and use tax, which applies to some of the transactions in Burlington, and then our gross receipts tax,” explains Devine. “Now that takes about a quarter for us to get that data from the state. But I’m expecting it to be strong. The other important thing too is gross receipts tax. Burlington has an option on that. So I also think that the city General Fund is going to see a pretty significant boost for that day.”
On Wednesday, Vermont Agency of Transportation Secretary Joe Flynn detailed initial data from a series of 29 counting stations across the state to track how many vehicles entered the state. There was an increase of about 60,000 vehicles with estimates of 2.8 people per vehicle.
Lawson says they will review that and other forms of data to try to determine the total impact.
“In the next few weeks we’ll take a look at smart phone geolocation information to track how many people are coming into the region and roughly speaking from where; where are they staying in the region while they’re here,” outlines Lawson. “A little bit after that we’ll have a look at credit card spend from visitors in the region. And then a little bit before those we’ll be able to take a look at occupancy. And then last of all, it just takes quite a long time, we’ll be able to see the state’s publicly available information on tax revenue for April. Over time we should be able to unpack all this and have a pretty good portrait of what the impact of it was.”
The tourism agencies anticipate it will take several months to get firm numbers. The Adirondack Coast Visitors Bureau is targeting issuing a preliminary report in late May.
