Warren County tourism director reports largely flat Q1 visitation, outlines Destination Sherpa planning

Evan, the Warren County tourism director, told the Tourism Committee on a phone meeting that first-quarter 2025 visitation and spending were largely flat compared with 2024 and outlined a multi-month strategic planning project called Destination Sherpa that will guide marketing and product priorities.

The report matters because the county uses mobile-device analytics, STR/CoStar data and Visa credit-card spend to set marketing priorities and budget allocations. Evan said those data point to modest year-over-year changes in lodging revenue and a decline in visitor spending from many origin markets, and recommended using the analysis to refine marketing to higher-yield origin markets.

Evan said the Destination Sherpa effort began with a presentation from consultant Josiah Brown and a two-day stakeholder workshop that drew about two dozen participants. "It let us identify what we need to do as a destination," Evan said, adding the project will produce a roadmap that the office will present to the committee once finished. He credited local business participants including Sasha of Adirondack Winery and Christine Powers for helping lead the second-day session.

The presentation summarized multiple data sources. Evan said two-thirds of mobile-device-detected visitors in Q1 2025 were from within New York state and that, within the state market, about half of overnight visitors originated from Albany and roughly one-third from the New York City metro area. For 2024, total Visa spending in the county reached nearly $620,000,000, down 3% from 2023; Evan reported Q1 2025 Visa spending totaled about $115,000,000 and was down about 2% versus Q1 2024. He cautioned these data have limits: the mobile-location study (Azira) is opt-in, and Visa data do not capture prepaid hotel bookings because many reservations are charged at the cardholder's home or on booking platforms.

Evan said hotels made up about 75% of accommodation revenue and about 85% of accommodation demand in 2024, but short-term rentals (STRs) outperformed hotels across several metrics in Q1 2025. "Short-term rentals' average daily rate is nearly 2.5 times higher than hotels," he said, noting that larger group properties explain part of the difference. He characterized Q1 hotel metrics and occupancy as "flat," with Q1 2025 hotel occupancy averaging about 37% (the full year 2024 average was 49%, peaking at 73% in August).

The report also reviewed attraction-level mobile-device detections. Lake George factory outlets remained the most popular location in the county; the Lake George Battlefield Park saw an increased share in 2025 while Six Flags Great Escape and Lodge saw a decline in first-quarter detections. Evan attributed some venue-level swings to changes in the Canadian market and to where particular businesses were affected by broader travel declines.

Committee members asked several methodological and strategy questions. Supervisor Girozzi thanked Evan for the report and asked whether the July occupancy numbers left room for growth; Evan replied that a strong hotel in July commonly runs about 70% to 75% occupancy. Supervisor Stroud and others questioned whether using only Visa and opt-in mobile sampling skews results by age or payment type; Evan acknowledged limitations and said the county will continue to weigh cost-effectiveness when adding datasets. The tourism director noted Rutland, Vt., had growth after targeted advertising there because visitors from that market tended to have higher per-visitor spending.

Evan said Rogue Marketing remains the county's agency of record and will produce quarterly analyses from the purchased data; he also noted that STR data sources have been consolidated under CoStar and that the county currently lacks some ZIP-code granular features from the new provider. He closed by saying presentations and additional detail will follow as the Destination Sherpa work is completed.

The committee had two brief procedural motions: approval of the May 21 minutes and an adjournment; both were recorded as carried by voice vote.