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Tourism dollars are up slightly, but there are other worrisome trends.

Visit LaGrange, Inc., the city’s destination marketing organization (DMO), presented its budget to the city council on Tuesday, noting there is good news and not-so-good news.

Visit LaGrange President Kathy Tilley said tourism dollars are up, but she also suspects they might not be next year. Hotel occupancy is also down, she said.

State and local tax revenues from tourists grew from $25.1 million in 2022 to $25.8 million in 2023, Tilley said.

“It’s a very slow growth,” Tilley said. “We had lots of good growth in 2021 and 2022. I do not expect 2024 state and local tax revenues to be up from $25.8 million,” Tilley said.

Tourism-related jobs did increase slightly from 2,598 to 2,612, but payroll increased greatly. 

“It’s about the same number of employees, or they’re turning over. New ones are hired, and they’re hired at a higher rate. Everybody knows the hard time that hospitality has had getting and retaining service employees,” Tilley said.

The good news is that the visitors who are coming here are spending. LaGrange ranks 12th in the state in visitor spending, excluding metro areas, which are in an entirely different stratosphere. The total visitor spending for 2023 was about $284.4 million, up from $273.4 million the previous year.

“Our tourists are coming. They’re spending, I’m very thankful that they have places to spend their money when they come,” Tilley said.

The biggest outside money draw is lodging at almost $94 million coming into LaGrange. Second is food and beverage at $77 million, and transportation with $48.3 million in third. Retail brings in $42.6 million, and recreation lags behind at $22.5 million.

Recreation spending includes the money spent attending sports events, participating in sports tournaments, for competitions, and engaging in sports-related activities, which LaGrange lags in. Much of LaGrange’s recreation tourism revenue comes from lake activities, but it’s limited due to access.

The city also does not have facilities to operate sporting tournaments, Tilley said, noting most of the sports facilities are used for Parks and Recreation.

“If we had a private facility, like a sports arena for baseball, people would drive here,” Tilley said. “We have discussed that. We’re in the prime location. There’s nowhere in Eastern Alabama. The closest one of us is Atlanta.”

Tilley said the not-so-good news is that hotel occupancy is down from 67% to 64%, which she believes is due to a couple of factors.

“Primarily, we have a very economy-sensitive tourism base. I don’t have a lot of Ritz-Carltons or Four Seasons. A lot of people who don’t come here are people who are affected by the economy. So when the price of eggs goes up, our occupancy goes down,” Tilley said.

The majority of the city’s hotels are very affordable hotels on the interstate. Great Wolf Lodge is somewhat immune to the outside economy, but they’re the only one, Tilley said.

“Hotel occupancy across the country in 2024 was 64%,” Tilley said. “The election, all the uncertainty, all that affects people’s ability to spend and their desire to spend.”

Accordingly, hotel-motel tax revenue dropped slightly from $4,988,916 in 2023 to $4,683,262 in 2024. Visit LaGrange gets 23% of that, about $1.1 million, which it uses to market the city.

Three-fourths of their funding then goes to directly marketing tourism in LaGrange, including marketing the city with billboards, influencers, Tik-Toks, along with digital and print media. The remaining quarter goes to administrative expenses.

“We provide a wide variety of things. We know who comes here. Families come here, people who like to drink craft beer and wine, people who like to go to Sweetland, and people who like unique shopping experiences,” Tilley said. “We try to promote all of LaGrange and fun things for families and people to do.”