Emery County travel board approves two-year Placer AI agreement for visitor analytics

The Emery County Travel Board voted Oct. 14, 2025 to approve a two-year agreement with Placer AI to provide location-based visitor analytics for Emery County, including unlimited county user licenses and regular consultant support.

Kevin Jensen, filling in as acting chair, introduced a Placer AI demonstration and the proposed contract terms. Chris, Placer AI’s product specialist, told the board the company studies anonymized mobile-app location signals from roughly 32 million devices in the United States and can produce near-real-time and historical reports going back to 2018. “We study the locations of millions of cell phones all across the United States,” Chris said, adding Placer aggregates data to preserve privacy and does not provide personally identifiable information.

The presentation showed sample outputs for Green River’s Okay Anderson Park and the county’s Melon Days event. Chris said the Melon Days report indicated about 8,700 unique visitors and roughly 9,900 total visits across two days, and estimated county overnight-tourist totals of about 264,000 visitors and 467,000 room nights over the past 12 months. He also described filters (for example, dwell-time thresholds) to exclude passersby and explained that certain sensitive locations (elementary schools, healthcare facilities, correctional facilities) are excluded for privacy reasons.

On pricing, Placer offered two options based on county population: a one-year agreement at $13,750, or a two-year agreement discounted to $12,000 in year one and $13,000 in year two. Chris said the multiyear contracts include a budget-failure clause for counties that lose funding year to year. “You get unlimited licenses for the county…you can run as many reports as you want,” he said.

After questions from board members about filtering, business-use cases and whether local businesses could receive data reports, Lacey moved to approve the two-year agreement, which received a second. The board conducted a roll call and the motion passed with recorded ‘aye’ votes from Larry, Lacey, Terry, Maria and Ren.

The approved agreement gives Emery County access to Placer’s Utah-level data and the county’s trade-area reporting; Placer said the county could later request expanded U.S.-wide access for an additional fee. Staff said the vendor agreement and a single-source justification would be sent to the county attorney for review.

The board’s action is intended to give staff analytic tools to measure event attendance, identify top visitor markets for targeted advertising and quantify economic impacts such as overnight stays and likely local spending. Placer representatives said regular onboarding and periodic consulting would be provided to help county staff use the platform.

The board moved on to budget items after the vote.