Block Island visitors spent $249 million in 2023, tourism presenter tells New Shoreham council

Jessica Willie, a tourism council presenter, briefed the New Shoreham Town Council on a state-sponsored tourism-economic study covering 2023 and explained how the numbers are calculated.

Willie said the report — prepared by Tourism Economics for the Rhode Island Division of Commerce — measures visitor spending across many sectors and “Visitors accounted for $5,600,000,000” in direct spending statewide in 2023. She told the council that the study uses survey data and tax records to estimate average visitor profiles and spending.

The presentation emphasized two different measures. Willie said the visitor-industry figure counts only travelers who stay overnight or travel at least 50 miles for a day trip; the broader “traveler economy” number also counts shorter-distance visitors and related construction and service impacts. For Block Island, she reported $249,000,000 in visitor-industry spending and $372,000,000 in the traveler economy in 2023.

Willie cautioned that the report’s methodology can undercount nearby day visitors because the global standard defines a “visitor” by overnight stay or a 50‑mile travel threshold. "For Block Island and in Rhode Island, a lot of people are visitors that travel much less than 50 miles," she said, noting the report therefore provides two comparable totals.

Councilors and residents who spoke after the presentation said the figures are useful but incomplete for local planning. Willie said she would like more granular data — private-boat and private-plane counts, ferry passenger counts broken out by operator, dockage and landing-fee data, and length-of-stay statistics — and that the tourism office has begun implementing a booking engine that may generate some of that information over time.

Resident David Lewis, who described a multi-decade career working with data, urged the council to collect local visitation metrics now rather than waiting until they are needed for grant applications or planning. Several council members said more precise local numbers would help with staffing, public-safety planning, sidewalk and traffic design, and decisions about shoulder‑season promotion.

Willie and councilors also discussed the report’s statewide context: the report attributed 86,612 jobs statewide to visitor activity in 2023 and $935,000,000 in state and local tax revenue. Willie highlighted a calculation in the report that, if tourism disappeared, each Rhode Island household would face roughly $2,160 in additional taxes to replace traveler‑generated revenues.

Council members asked about likely near-term changes from new hotel supply, room-rate shifts since the pandemic, and potential staffing impacts from federal temporary-worker programs; Willie said supply and pricing shifts will influence outcomes but the town would not see those effects in published statewide reports until later annual releases.

The tourism report is available to council members and the public; Willie said the state’s 2024 numbers should be released in October 2025. She encouraged the council to consider local data collection (ferry and private-boat counts, camera counts, booking-engine outputs) to support municipal planning and future grant applications.