Here are the Tourism numbers for August, 2023.
NOTE: Due to construction and the excessive heat warning closure in August, the American Giants Museum was closed for 14 days in August, so this data will generally reflect a half-month. Also, these counts are only from hours when the American Giants Museum is staffed, which is currently fluctuating as new volunteers are still being added and not all hours are being covered. As more days/hours are covered, the data will be more robust and additional analytics can be extrapolated. So, take this first batch of data with a grain of salt.
As we continue to build on data collection via Tourism, additional data points will be collected, such as visitor’s country, type of visitor (i.e. Route 66 traveler, destination visitor, school trip), adults vs children, weather conditions, holidays, and so on.
How Data Is Collected
Tourism volunteers visually count visitors when on duty. There are currently three data points: Visitors In Town; visitors that enter the American Giants Museum (AGM); and drive-bys.
Visitors In Town
Each individual visitor seen in the downtown Arch Street area is counted.
American Giants Museum Visitors
Each individual visitor that enters the American Giants Museum is counted. This is a separate count from Visitors In Town. Everyone counted here is also included in the Visitors In Town data.
Drive-Bys
A drive-by is when a vehicle stops to take a photo, then leaves. They don’t exit their vehicle. This data is counted as one-per-vehicle.
August 2023 Data
Visitors In Town: 1,197
AGM Visitors: 615 (51.38% of Visitors In Town)
Drive-Bys: 87
The average Visitors In Town was 38.61 people per day, and 8.56 per hour.
The average Visitors in the AGM was 19.84 people per day, and 4.70 per hour.
Conclusions
Since this is just the beginning of collecting data, there aren’t many trends or comparisons to make at this time.
However, there is one concerning point as we only had about half (51%) of visitors coming into the American Giants Museum when it is open. I noticed this early and I’ve been investigating this issue. I found there are a number of reasons, including not realizing it’s open, not being able to tell it’s a museum, not noticing it at all, avoiding it because of the traffic cones placed in front of the building, etc.
We’ve had a lot of visitors approach the AGM or even access the property to take photos, but don’t enter. If they are close to the door or in front of the museum, volunteers have been opening the door and inviting them in, which increases the counts. However, this demonstrates the natural percentage would have been lower than 51%.
These issues will need to be addressed.
One positive aspect is the impact of Tourism on local business. For example, Arch Street Artisans shop has reported high numbers of sales (if not records) for the past couple of months. The efforts of Tourism directing visitors into Arch Street Artisans has already had a major and direct result. Chubby’s has also seen an increase in business. Our volunteers are trained to ask a series of questions to visitors who enter the American Giants Museum, then direct them to local businesses. These practices have already proven highly effective.
The Data
