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OCVB: Celebration of Lights brought roughly $332,000 in revenue; staff exploring Placer AI for event analytics
Summary
Tourism staff reported Celebration of Lights ticket and vehicle stats and $331,980.23 in preliminary revenue; staff described sponsorship outreach and ongoing evaluation of Placer AI mobile‑tracking analytics to measure foot traffic and visitor origin patterns.
At the Jan. 22 OCVB Commission meeting, tourism and festivals staff reported preliminary results for Celebration of Lights and described plans to use mobile‑tracking analytics to better target promotions.
Jennifer, the commission's festivals/tourism lead, said Celebration of Lights sold 14,509 stroll tickets out of 15,000 and reported $116,702 in stroll ticket revenue; general admission ticket sales generated $173,418. She said the event saw more than 10,702 cars, 151 vans, 42 buses, 1,426 trolley rides, 53 sleigh/hay rides and 28 train rides sold, and that sponsorships added $7,750, putting preliminary total revenue at $331,980.23. Jennifer noted those figures exclude some outstanding invoicing and ticket‑platform fees.
Commissioners asked whether concurrent events (such as activity at CarShield Field) or weather affected attendance. Jennifer said rain reduced scanned tickets on one evening despite the session being sold out, and she highlighted calendar timing as an additional factor.
On sponsorship outreach, Jennifer said opportunities are listed on the event website and staff also contact previous sponsors; marketing staff primarily handle inbound leads and can follow up with new businesses. A local business owner asked whether the commission could proactively contact new area businesses; Jennifer said marketing staff will follow up on contact information provided at the meeting.
Jennifer described exploratory work with Placer AI, a mobile‑tracking data provider. She said the vendor can break down attendance by day and hour, generate heat maps, and report visitor home‑ZIP distributions dating back to 2017. As an example, Jennifer shared a Placer AI sample report for a June concert that showed roughly 2,100 park visitors that day and a strong concentration of visitors coming from within 1–5 miles; she said the tool could help refine billboard placement and grant applications but cautioned the data are a surface‑level view and that she is still learning how to interpret the reports.
The commission supported the budgeted purchase of mobile‑data analytics and asked staff to provide further reports and historical comparisons at future meetings.
