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City staff report rising visitor counts, cite festivals and football weekends
Summary
Parks and Visit Norman staff told the Business & Community Affairs Committee that visitation across Norman parks and downtown is trending up, with major spikes tied to Medieval Fair, Norman Music Festival and OU football weekends; staff highlighted new Datify analytics and a recent guest‑tax boost.
City parks and tourism staff reported rising visitation across Norman at the Business & Community Affairs Committee meeting Aug. 6.
Jason Olsen, director of parks and recreation, and Dan Shim of Visit Norman presented 12‑month trends showing a steady resident baseline and sharp out‑of‑town spikes that staff linked to festivals and University of Oklahoma football weekends. Olsen said Griffin Park recorded more than 400,000 visitors over the past year and that the Young Family Athletic Center sees consistent monthly traffic tied to weekend tournaments.
The presentation listed recent event attendance using Placer data: the Medieval Fair at Reeve's Park (~94,000), Norman Music Festival (~62,000), Jazz in June (~6,800), Pride at Andrews Park (~2,900) and Juneteenth (~3,600). Staff cautioned year‑to‑year comparisons are sensitive to weather and noted some events that were previously shortened by rain have recovered this year.
Shim described how staff use trip counts and origin markets to target marketing. "We use this data to kind of look at where should we be targeting our dollars towards, who's coming the most, who's staying the longest," he said, noting Austin surpassed Dallas this year as a top origin market. The city has also switched data providers from Artico to Datify and plans deeper analysis of spend-per-trip and overnight patterns.
Why it matters: The trends affect marketing allocations, park operations and future event planning. Staff said passenger‑origin and hotel‑stay metrics inform where to advertise and where to focus investments in park amenities and tournament scheduling. The committee asked staff to provide more granular writeups on drivers behind downtown's year-over‑year gains.
The committee moved on after the presentation; staff will circulate the underlying data links for council review.
