Poulsbo council previews Placer AI visitor‑tracking tool to guide events and tourism planning

Poulsbo City Council received a demonstration of Placer AI, a subscription software tool that uses anonymized cell‑phone location data to estimate visitor counts, origins and dwell time in defined geographic zones.

The demonstration, delivered by Jeff Osmek, Poulsbo’s parks and recreation director, covered a rolling 12‑month dataset (Sept. 2024–Aug. 2025) for Waterfront Park and nearby parking. Osmek said the platform “is a visitor economics metrics tool” that shows who comes to defined zones, how often and for how long.

Placer AI’s report shown to the council indicated roughly 400,000 visits to the Waterfront Park zone in the prior 12 months, with about 112,000 of those visits originating in the Poulsbo ZIP code. Osmek told the council the platform reports visits when a cell phone spends more than 10 minutes in the defined area and calculates “unique visitors” separately from total visits.

Councilmembers pressed staff on data limits and how the city will use the product. Members asked how the platform distinguishes residents from visitors, whether it separates modes of travel (walk, bike, car) and how the product handles event outliers. Osmek said Placer’s algorithms infer a phone’s home location based on where the device spends most nights; he noted the product uses probability models rather than precise addresses and that data points are “randomly placed within a census block,” which reduces pinpointing of individual residences.

Councilmembers also raised Viking Fest and other large events as outliers that can skew maps and traffic routing. Osmek said staff can remove outlier days or run alternate time windows to compare data without specific event spikes. He cautioned the platform requires staff time to learn and to set appropriate geographic zones and date ranges.

On data access, Osmek said the city can generate reports and export CSV files on request for event organizers and fund applicants; however, he said the Placer subscription does not give unrestricted access to raw historical location data once a report is generated. He also said the platform allows toggles for visit thresholds (for example, the 10‑minute minimum used in the demonstration) and produces heat maps and origin zip‑code breakdowns.

City staff and council members discussed likely uses: informing lodging‑tax grant awards, timing and routing for special events, scheduling maintenance during lower‑use windows, and giving small event organizers empirical attendance data for grant applications. Osmek described examples in which the city used the tool to confirm lower attendance at a rain‑affected festival and to estimate pump‑track usage for a partner group.

Council members and staff requested follow‑up analysis on specific questions: removing Viking Fest weekend from the dataset to see baseline patterns, matching visitor origins against local lodging inventories, and exploring ways to incorporate maritime (boat) arrivals or other non‑cellphone sources. Osmek said those follow‑ups are possible and that staff would prioritize work based on capacity.

Why it matters: The tool offers the city new, data‑driven options to align event timing and maintenance, to target lodging‑tax dollars and to show grant funders usage patterns; council members cautioned that the platform’s outputs should be “ground‑truthed” against local knowledge before major policy decisions.

The council did not vote on the software subscription during the meeting; Osmek said the city requested lodging‑tax funding for a continued subscription in the next funding cycle and that staff would provide deeper reports on request.