Buckle up, Sedona: You’re getting a lot fewer total tourists than previously thought.
For decades, Sedonans have repeated “3 million to 3.5 million” when talking about the number of tourists who visit annually. Former Mayor Sandy Moriarty said in November 2022 that she was hearing figures as high as 4 million visitors being tossed around when she moved to the as-yet-unincorporated town 50 years previously.
Now, after the city of Sedona has poured several million dollars into its new tourism program, including extensive data collection and studies conducted by the consulting firms Kimley-Horn and Tourism Economics, newer and better numbers are available, which city staff presented to the Sedona City Council on Aug. 14.
Kimley-Horn’s analysis concluded that Sedona received:
- 3.16 million visits in 2019
- 3.28 million visits in 2021
- 3.22 million visits in 2022
Kimley-Horn did not calculate numbers in 2020, which was during the COVID-19 pandemic. Travel restrictions limited tourism worldwide.
Tourism Economics similarly concluded that Sedona received:
- 2,835,947 visits in 2018
- 3,001,838 visits in 2019
- 2,745,146 visits in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic
- 3,286,675 visits in 2021
- 3,160,322 visits in 2022
As the Aug. 14 tourism report explicitly states, “these numbers are not unique visitors, but instead are visits … regarding unique visitors, this number is more challenging to calculate and there are significant limitations in the data. However, as a very rough approximation, Kimley-Horn estimates there were:”
- 1.36 million unique visitors in 2019
- 1.42 million unique visitors in 2021
- 1.39 million unique visitors in 2022
The numbers indicate, for example that 1.42 million visitors arrived in 2021, with some returning more than once, for a total of 3.28 million visits.
An annual average of 1.39 million unique visitors would be 60% less than the previously stated number of 3.5 million. Even if the “3.5 million” figure were being cited in reference to visits rather than visitors, an average of 3.22 million visits, according to the Kimley-Horn findings, or 3 million visits, according to the Tourism Economics findings, would be 8% and 14% lower, respectively, than previous assumptions.
While Sedona was perceived to be swamped with visitors in late 2020 and throughout 2021, during what the travel industry called “revenge tourism,” creating new and unprecedented traffic and congestion conditions, the new numbers show the uptick was more modest, with tourism having dropped by 8.5% from 2019 to 2020, then increased by 9.5% from 2019 to 2021, per the Tourism Economics findings, or increased by just 3.8% from 2019 to 2021, per the Kimley-Horn findings.
“Lodging demand estimates from Smith Travel Research showed a 1.5% increase in hotel lodging demand between 2019 and 2021, and continuous traffic counts from ADOT along SR 179 and SR 89A showed a 0.7% increase in average daily traffic volume,” the final report from the visitor study stated.
Sedona has approximately 2,800 hotel rooms. Average annual hotel occupancy in 2021 was 67%. If occupancy averaged two people per room, the number of overnight visitors in hotels would have been 1.37 million for the year.
The city does not track short-term rental occupancy. There are approximately 1,100 short-term rentals in Sedona.
In 2021, 54% of all visitors and more than 90% of visitors who did not stay overnight were from Arizona. Yavapai County was the source of “33% of all visitors,” while approximately 5% of all visitors came from Coconino County and another 12% from Maricopa County. Subtracting residents of the two local counties from the 1.39 million average annual visitor count indicates that the average number of non-local visitors to Sedona over the 2019-22 period was 861,800 per year.
The May 2024 visitor study repeated the statement that “approximately 38% of Sedona workers live within the city limits,” echoing the city’s 2018 Transit Implementation Plan, which stated that “approximately 38% of Sedona residents work within the city.”
The figures provided in the transit plan, based on the 2016 American Community Survey estimates, indicated that 1,206 Sedona residents were employed within the city at that time, compared to 3,617 employees who worked in Sedona but commuted from outside the city, with resident workers making up 25% of the total workforce and 12.5% of the total population as of the most recent census.
Verde Village residents made up 11% of the Sedona workforce, Cottonwood residents 10%, Village of Oak Creek residents 9%, Flagstaff residents 5% and Camp Verde residents 3%.
