New tourism reports indicate that visitation and spending in the Adirondack region have increased over the past year.
The Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism, or ROOST, is out with its annual leisure travel study assessing visitor demographics and spending.
ROOST Chief Operating Officer Mary Jane Lawrence says the assessment is one of many data sources that helps them assess marketing efforts.
“If we go back to 2020 we certainly saw larger numbers per group and longer length stays. That does coincide with COVID,” recalls Lawrence. “But, you know, we’re not looking for huge deviations in the information. We’re looking for consistencies. It’s to gain insight from the traveler on how long they stayed, what they did, why they were here, their average spend, how many people were in their parties, etc.”
The ROOST report focuses on visitation to Essex and Hamilton Counties, and the villages of Saranac Lake and Tupper Lake.
The current analysis finds that expenditures rose slightly to the highest levels in the 20 years of the survey. The number of travelers who came to the region in 2023 from within New York state rose 1 percent and there was a marginal increase in Canadian visitors, but travelers from states outside the Northeast decreased slightly to 7 percent.
Lawrence says there are no big surprises and it reinforces that their marketing efforts are showing results.
“It helps businesses, other destinations within our organization, verify that this is where the traveler is coming from, this is how long they’re staying. That’s important information when you’re making business decisions,” Lawrence asserts. “If you’re a retail store and the majority of the people are coming for hiking. You know many of the lodging properties and businesses do their own marketing and so to align their marketing with what we’re doing and where we’re seeing people come from is helpful. You know, you see how many people are in the average party and how long they’re staying for, maybe you would create packages around that.”
Shortly after ROOST released its tourism assessment, New York state released the statewide Annual Tourism Economic Impact Report finding a 6.6 percent increase in visitor spending in Essex, Franklin and Hamilton counties.
The Mirror Lake Inn is a AAA Four Diamond resort in Lake Placid. Operations Manager Andrew Weibrecht says the ROOST report probably won’t change their marketing.
“But it does help reinforce what we already know about the area. That people are coming up here to hike and people are coming up here to use the lakes and the natural resources. It’s great to reinforce it. But honestly, it’s a drum that we’ve been beating since I remember being a kid here,” Weibrecht adds with a chuckle. “It to me seems to be an obvious thing that this is what people are here for and if you can give them an incredible experience outside of the hiking that they’re doing or outside of being on the lake. If you can give them a great place to stay, great meals, it only helps to create more return travel.”
Weibrecht outlines some of the intriguing travel trends they’ve noticed.
“The area in general got discovered a lot because of the COVID effect. A lot of people came up here and have continued to come up here because it’s a drive distance from New York City. And that is our primary market,” notes Weibrecht. “It’s a little bit different in the summer. We see a lot of people from New York City, and we always see a lot of people from the Capital Region obviously, but the New York metro area is our biggest probably year-round market. And then it’s interesting. In the summer more people come from the Boston area and then as we get into fall and winter the majority of our guests tend to be coming more north to south, so the New Jersey-New York City-Connecticut. Anybody that’s coming from the east seems like they tend to get blocked by the White Mountains or the Green Mountains as you get into foliage and skiing and stuff like that.”
The Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism reports that tourism generates over 44 percent of all labor income in Essex County and 37 percent in Hamilton County.
