While day trippers from Phoenix, Tucson or Flagstaff are nice, they spend a relatively small amount of money at an Uptown shop or West Sedona restaurant on their way to a hiking trail or spot in Oak Creek Canyon. They only add a small amount to Sedona’s tax base via sales tax.
It is the long-stay tourist coming to Sedona after or before visiting the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Canyon de Chelly or other Southwestern sites and planning to stay in our city for a few days that really drives our economy. They spend significantly more at shops, galleries, restaurants and grocery stores and the bed taxes they pay at hotels, motels and resorts are split between the city and the chamber, which reinvests the funds to attract more tourists to visit Sedona.
The chamber has long sought to attract these long-term tourists. They are the main focus of the Sustainable Tourism Plan, which is being billed as “The End of Tourism as We Know It” by both the chamber and city officials.
This has been part of Sedona’s chamber mission in recent years: To focus less on sheer numbers of bodies, which is the general trend of most chambers of commerce in other towns and cities, and instead focus on the economic impact of said tourists, i.e. people willing to stay in a hotel for a night or more and thus significantly contribute to our region’s economy.
The overall number of tourists has remained relatively steady since Fiscal Year 2013-14 based on occupancy rates at area lodging facilities, but the sales tax collection between Fiscal Year 2013-14 to Fiscal Year 2018-19 has risen from $12,593,025 to $21,352,002.
While some opponents of the chamber blame it for increased traffic, the chamber is not responsible for Sedona’s roads or traffic flows — that is wholly the purview of the city. The chamber’s mission is to attract the kind of tourists its members and city officials want most.
That being said, while traffic delays are up since before 2017, which should be no surprise to any Sedona resident who has to drive between West Sedona and Uptown in the afternoon or anyone who tries to hit the road on a weekend, the traffic delays in specific areas of town are down slightly from 2018 to 2019, even though overall sales tax and bed tax collection is up.
This is because tourists are gradually shifting to other destinations, trailheads and sites in and around Sedona rather than the same old sites and because the chamber is working to draw tourists to Sedona at slower parts of the year and not work to draw any more tourists during the busy times, when tourists are already coming regardless of our efforts.
The fact is that tourism by itself is not a negative to most residents. Sedona residents are more than willing to share space on trails or wait a bit at restaurants for a table, or help direct someone lost in Uptown without much of a second thought. Most residents understand that tourism is the driver of Sedona’s economy, benefits to some degree all the other towns in the Verde Valley and keeps our economy moving. Residents who look at the numbers also understand that tourist sales tax is the reason we don’t need a property tax to run our city.
Residents also tend to not carry any animus against individual tourists they encounter, rather it is tourists as a class they are hostile toward. Yet the main complaint against this class is the traffic snarls they cause, the constant repetition of which is what makes residents angry. If the city solved all of Sedona’s traffic woes tomorrow, griping about tourists would largely evaporate.
That being said, the chamber is working to spread out the tourists we do have to help reduce their impact. Now it’s up to the city to step up and improve traffic flow for residents and our visitors.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
