MACON, Ga. (April 22, 2024) — Visit Macon, in partnership with the International Cherry Blossom Festival and the Macon Christmas Light Extravaganza, are proud to announce the economic impact and visitation report for this year’s events.
This year’s (2024) International Cherry Blossom Festival welcomed an estimated 186,367 unique visitors from all distances. This is a 16% increase over 2023. Also notable were that 34.7% of all attendees were from out of state, with an estimated total of 38,338 unique visitors from outside a distance of 50 miles or more, an increase of 6% over the previous year.
The economic impact of this year’s event also celebrates continued growth at $6.1 million. Up from 5.5 million from the previous year.
Visit Macon is also proud to announce that this report follows a similar trend as did the 2023/24 Macon Christmas Light Extravaganza. This year’s holiday event saw an estimated 850,000 in attendance over the course of the display. (Up from 790,000 last year.)
It also shows that 33% in attendance traveled in from outside a 50 mile radius, compared to 27% the previous year. Nearly 8.5% of visits from 50+ miles were from Florida, 3.5% from Alabama, and 3% from South Carolina. For those traveling from 50+ miles, Saturday was the largest attended day, whereas Fridays saw the largest attendance for all visits including locals.
The economic impact of the Macon Christmas Light Extravaganza was $6.8 million and marketwide spending was up 15.2% from 2022.
“With our data provider, we are also able to watch the flow of traffic from the lights display. We saw a very even distribution throughout downtown from the movement of those targeted visiting the lights display, however, we were also able to witness a large concentration visiting The Shoppes at River Crossing in North Macon more than any other Macon location outside of Downtown.” explains Vice President & COO of Visit Macon, Aaron Buzza. “This just proves that visitors are looking for shopping experiences during this timeframe and we hope we can help Macon businesses use this to build a marketing plan for 2024 – and effectively distribute that traffic to more areas of Macon as each year continues to grow!”
“51% of visitors who traveled 50+ miles stayed more than 2 days! 47.2% of all visitors came from households of 3-5 people, with 10.4% coming from households of more than 6 people.” said Buzza. “26.3% of visitors came from households earning more than $75,000/year. We are thrilled to see these visitors spending money within our destination and know that the strongest tool we have for continued economic impact is hospitality and making their visit enjoyable year after year so they continue to come back!”
“We are so pleased to see the efforts of Visit Macon alongside the staff & volunteers of these two great Macon events! Stacy Moore and her staff of the Cherry Blossom Festival continue to put on a fantastic, well-organized event that we are excited to watch continue to grow. And, Bryan Nichols and all of the work he puts into the downtown Christmas Light Extravaganza is just amazing.” says President & CEO of Visit Macon, Gary Wheat. “These two events are by far established as Macon’s signature annual events and we are so thankful visitors continue to enjoy them!”
Visit Macon is not stopping there. With plans to contribute to other Macon organizations and events throughout the year, such as Bragg Jam, the King of Soul Festival, Ocmulgee Indigenous Celebration and many more. For more information about event grant opportunities or to see how Visit Macon can help support an event, please reach out to Visit Macon’s Director of Destination Development, Trish Whitley (e: twhitley@visitmacon.org).
“We want to support the events that locals love and enjoy! We are happy to do what we can to market what Macon already has to visitors, most importantly the events that contribute to room nights and hotel stays… because they are looking!” says Trish Whitley. “User traffic to visitmacon.org is up an average of 50%! During the Christmas Lights our website saw 80,000 users this year, up from 47,000 in 2022; and 82,000 users during the month of March (2024), up from 49,600 in 2023.”
“Visitors are researching and planning and we want to be ready for events yearound that entice them to choose Macon!”
