SAN ANTONIO – San Antonio is the No. 1 Christmas lights destination in the country, according to Visit San Antonio, and that means more people will be traveling to the Alamo City to experience it in all its glory.
What keeps San Antonio’s tourism motor running? According to tens of thousands of surveys compiled by Visit San Antonio, it’s a very important family.
“Marketing tells us the No. 1 visitor is a young family. They are in their 40s. They are coming in. They have a couple of kids, and they are going to stay 2.4 days,” said Richard Oliver, with Visit San Antonio.
That’s just one of the finding of last year’s massive data compilation. Another statistic shows that 73 percent of people who visit San Antonio are from Texas, and they visit almost every year. And visitors from out of state usually visit the city in the wintertime.
“One of the things we pitch a lot is that we are a beautiful city at a time of year when it’s not so beautiful where you are,” Oliver said.
In the battle of millennials versus baby boomers, they are pretty much even in the Visit San Antonio department.
"They love history and culture. It's the No. 1 thing that people come here for — history and culture. But at the same time, if you're a family, you have that diversity of attractions. ‘Hey, let's got to the Witte. Let's go to the McNay for us, but we can go to the Witte for the kids, the DoSeum, some of those places,’” Oliver said.
There is a large project underway in which there will be a partnership between Visit San Antonio and MasterCard.
“It's going to be very much more into the weeds than we have done before, and show us what they are spending, this is what we should market, how far out should we market, where should we market,” Oliver said.
The project will be like a credit card visitor guestbook that will help map out tourism for the future.