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Explore New Bedford reports 1.4 million visits (May2024May2025) and $2M in hotel/meals tax; tourism director defends ROI and grant-funded marketing
Summary
Explore New Bedford Director Ashley Payne told the City Council the department tracked roughly 1.4 million visits between May 2024 and May 2025, and that FY24 hotel and meals tax revenue topped $2 million; she described grant and partnership efforts that expanded the department's reach on a small operating budget.
Ashley Payne, director of tourism and marketing (Explore New Bedford), briefed the City Council on FY25 tourism metrics, marketing efforts and funding. Payne said the city recorded more than $2 million in hotel and meals tax revenue in FY24 and that a private data provider (Placer.ai) estimated about 1.4 million visits to the city from May 2024 to May 2025, producing roughly 96,000 hotel-night stays.
Payne described the department as a two-person office that runs marketing campaigns, hosts familiarization (FAM) tours for travel writers and tour operators, manages earned media outreach and serves as the cityfilm office. She said the department achieved roughly 38 million tracked advertising impressions in FY25 and raised about $150,000 in grants and sponsorships (in addition to its roughly $250,000 operating budget). She cited partnerships, remnant ad placements and in-kind contributions that allowed national editorial coverage in Food & Travel, National Geographic and other outlets at a fraction of typical advertising costs.
Payne said the department did not seek new enhancements for FY26 (beyond routine salary steps) and emphasized the role of tourism in stimulating local businesses and supporting hotel development. Councilors asked for more detail on visitor metrics, and Payne said the private data product combines geolocation-derived visits and partner-supplied museum and hotel counts; she offered to dig further into origin and activity breakdowns. Councilors also discussed event budgets: Payne said some event costs (for example, fireworks and New Years Eve) rely on sponsorships and ad-hoc appropriations and that the department had budgeted $5,000 in its civic-functions line to support free programming and sponsorship-seeding for events.
