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Skagit Tourism Bureau reports stronger visitor spending in 2025; council probes data methods
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Summary
Skagit Tourism Bureau presented 2025 marketing outcomes to Anacortes council, citing a $12.1M advertising attribution and explaining how that differs from a separate $386M statewide tourism sales estimate; councilors asked about geofence data access and Canadian visitor tracking.
Kristen Kelts of the Skagit Tourism Bureau briefed the Anacortes City Council on March 23 about the bureau’s 2025 marketing, public relations and grant activities.
Kelts said the bureau’s media attribution program reported about $12.1 million in visitor spend tied to their marketing efforts and roughly 18,500 overnight stays attributed to campaigns. She contrasted that attribution figure with a tourism economic study (a state‑level analysis) that puts total tourism‑related sales in Skagit County at about $386 million in 2024; Kelts said the two numbers measure different things — campaign‑attributed card spend versus a broader sales aggregation by the state.
"The $12,100,000 number comes directly from our attribution from our marketing campaign," Kelts said. "That $386,000,000 is a tourism economic study that the state of Washington does for every community."
Councilmembers asked about the bureau’s use of geofencing and DataFi (a data dashboard) and who may access the event reporting. Elizabeth Tyler, the bureau’s vice president of marketing and operations, said nonprofits and chambers can request event‑template reporting and that the bureau offers a stakeholder extranet for partners to update listings. Kelts described targeted campaigns (including an "Always Here" campaign for Canadian visitors), grant‑funded brochures and partnerships with Port of Seattle and state tourism offices.
The presentation closed with a short video and a promise to share 2025 data at the bureau’s tourism summit when the 2025 hotel‑stay metrics are finalized.
