Southern Sawyer County is home to the Tuscobia Trail and Flambeau River which are by in large popular ATV, UTV and Snowmobiling areas and typically in the shadow of the Hayward area tourism organizations.
The Southern Sawyer County Tourism Project
The Southern Sawyer County Tourism Marketing Project is a collaboration between Hooties Hauler and Superior Marketing. The project is titled, “Explore Southern Sawyer County“, and is not a tourism bureau, or destination marketing organizatio – rather a marketing project to help support the local businesses in Southern Sawyer County. As part of the project, Hooties Hauler will be implementing a series of Tavern Tours throughout Southern Sawyer County, along the Tuscobia State Trail, Chippewa Flowage and Flambeau River State Forest to help inspire additional visitor spending, create greater awareness for the establishments in these areas, and encourage them to come back to these areas on a family vacation, day trip, or overnight weekend vacation blitz. We have compiled the data to support additional resources, focus and spending as a means to increase additional visitor spending in these areas. Our goal is to help bring more visitors to these areas and help them choose Southern Sawyer County as their premier vacation destination spot.
Mission and Vision
The Mission and Vision are pretty simple, and also pretty clear. Help promote tourism to the area by using a simple three step process:
- Create Awareness: Creating awareness by bringing visitors and vacationers to the area for lodging, food and beverage, retail, transportation and recreation, to name a few. Those categories are the top spending areas from the Wisconsin Department of Tourism report for Fiscal Year 2022. We want to create awareness that establishments exists in this area, and there is an abundance of opportunities beyond ATV, UTV and snowmobiling in this area.
- Education: Educating prospective visitors that there are more than day-trips available in Southern Sawyer County, that you can experience family vacations in these areas with the plenthora of community festivals, events, recreational opportuniites, lodging and dining options, and that you can have a wide range of experiences in these areas.
- Engagement: Hooties Hauler will be the primary driver behind bringing people to the area for these experiences utilizing the Tavern Tours. The Tavern Tours are going to be a great pre-cursor to driving traffic and creating short-term experiences. We’ll leverage the Visitor Guide for 2023 and 2024 to help create additional awareness for the surrounding establishments.
Wisconsin Tourism Visitor and Spending Report from 2022
Visitor Spending Visits to Wisconsin destinations increased by nearly nine million in 2022, bringing visitor levels to within 2% of pre-pandemic levels. Overnight visits led growth as city and event travel grew in 2022. With trips and prices both increasing, visitor spending jumped 16% in 2022. This growth has brought spending levels to 108% of 2019 levels. Lodging, including short-term rentals and second homes, accounts for the largest share of visitor spending in Wisconsin at 27%. Visitors spent 26% of their trip budget on food and beverages – in businsses from restaurants to grocery stores to cheese shops. Retails $2.9 billion in spending from visitors were 19.5% of the visitor dollar within transporation and recreation representing 13%-14% of total visitor spending in Wisconsin in 2022.
Visitor Spending by Segment Visitor spending has increased, but the question becomes, “what are the visitors spending their dollars on?”
PURPOSE
89.2% – Leisure
10.8% – Business
DAY / OVERNIGHT
67.4% – Overnight Visitors
33.6% – Day Spending
VISITOR TYPE
97.9% – Domestic
02.1% – International
111.1M – People Visited Wisconsin in 2022
65.7M – Day Trips and Day Visits
45.4M – Overnight Visits
$14.9M in Total Visitor Spending in 2022
$4.9M – Day Trip Spending
$10.0M – Overnight Trip Spending
Market Attribution Report
The report is vast, but the key take aways from these reports come in the form of visitor attribution.
AVG LENGTH OF STAY
2.9 Days
TOTAL PARTY SIZE
4.3 People
ADULTS
3.0
AVERAGE TRIP VALUE
*$534
Average Length of Stay
The national average for daily spending on vacation is $144 per day, this includes day trips and overnight trips averaged out. Wisconsin comes in at $184 per day which is calculated by taking the $534 average trip value and dividing by the 2.9 average length stay.
TOP WISCONSIN COUNTIES WITH AVG LENGTH OF STAY
- Vilas County: 43.5 hours
- Door County: 40.5 hours
- Sawyer County: 37.8 hours
The goal will be to help migrate some of those visitors and vacationers from the Hayward Lakes area and inspire them to experience South Sawyer County.
How do I get involved?
Visit www.lakesandtrails.us and submit your business information to get featured and become a member. The advantages of membership include getting a business featured distributed across 300+ national, regional and local news and media sources, a promotional video, a full page into the Southern Sawyer County Traveler Guide, a business listing on the Explore Southern Sawyer County website, and constantly promotion via social media. This project is a great opportunity to get a return-on-investment from your membership dollars, and begin to assess your membership with other area organizations.
More info: https://www.lakesandtrails.us/
Media Contact
Company Name: Explore Southern Sawyer County
Contact Person: Curtis DeCora
Email: Send Email
Phone: (715) 638-0481
Address:10767 Nyman Ave
City: Hayward
State: Wisconsin 54843
Country: United States
Website: https://www.lakesandtrails.us/