Visit Fresno County says Swedish Festival and holiday events bring visitors and local spending to Kingsburg
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Summary
A Visit Fresno County presentation to the Kingsburg Downtown BID Advisory Board estimated about $171,000 in out-of-area visitor spending over three days at the Swedish Festival and higher dwell times for the Santa Lucia celebration, and offered data-driven recommendations for event marketing and planning.
Dylan Hopkins, director of data and research at Visit Fresno County, told the Kingsburg Downtown Business Improvement District Advisory Board on April 7 that cellphone geolocation analysis shows a modest year-over-year drop in total visits for the 2025 Swedish Festival but an increase in unique visitors and longer average dwell times that are beneficial for downtown merchants.
"Although the total number of people over the three days was a little bit lower, the number of different people that came was higher," Hopkins said, adding that the greatest increase was in the 2.5-hour-and-greater dwell-time category, which he described as "really good for downtown businesses as people that spend more time here have more opportunity to spend money." He also estimated roughly 52 room nights at the Fairfield Inn & Suites over the festival period and an approximate $171,000 in visitor spending generated by out-of-area attendees across the three days.
Hopkins explained the methodology: the reports use aggregated cellphone geolocation and point-of-interest geofencing to generate visit counts, dwell-time ranges and origin ZIP-code breakdowns. He acknowledged limitations in the raw data but said the firm can refine reports when local background information (for example, which businesses were open during an event) is supplied. "Some of these places will cover the parking lot and then the outside sidewalks," he said in response to concerns that parked cars or closed businesses can create misleading pings.
Board members asked how the presentation defines "unique visitors" and how origin is assigned. Hopkins said the dataset counts multiple visits by the same device in the total-visits metric but counts a device only once in the unique-visitor metric; origin is inferred from a device's most frequent location pattern. "We found this pretty accurate and pretty close to real attendance numbers that we've seen at events," he said, while also offering to run tailored reports for the board on request.
Hopkins' slides showed that dining and retail are the most frequent business categories visited before and after events, and he recommended using targeted Facebook and Instagram advertising (ZIP-code-targeted paid ads) and some print outreach for older markets. Lauren Nickel of the Kingsburg Chamber of Commerce said the Chamber will help by hosting tables at a regional car show and displaying Spring Stroll materials on the Chamber's TV and sandwich boards.
The presentation prompted operational questions from board members about refining the dataset (removing closed-business POIs, clarifying parking-lot pings) and how to use the ZIP-code and drive-market data to target marketing. Hopkins said he can run additional analyses and work with the city clerk and BID members to refine future reports.
The board did not take a formal vote on the presentation but discussed using the data to inform Spring Stroll and other event promotions. The board's next meeting is scheduled for May 5.
