Tourism Satellite Account Calendar Year 2014

1. The Economic Impact of Tourism in Finney County, Kansas Tourism Satellite AccountCalendar Year 2014

2. Headline results • Key indicators in Finney County are supporting the importance and growth of tourism in the county. • Visitors spent $87 million in Finney County in 2014 with spending growing 9%. • Visitor spending in Finney County ranks 11th among all counties in the state, rising one spot in 2014. • This spending directly supports 883 jobs with overall visitor-supported economic activity supporting more than 1,150 jobs – one out of every 16 jobs in the county. • Tourism in Finney County generated $13.2 million in tax revenues in 2014, with $8.2 million accruing to state and local governments.

3. Trends and Analysis

4. Key trends • Examining the performance of key travel sectors in the county in comparison to the state and other industries supports the analysis. • Leisure and hospitality (LHS) sales in Finney County rebounded in 2013 and 2014, with growth outpacing and surpassing LHS sales at the state level. • Taxable sales in the leisure and hospitality industry have increased by a third since 2010. • Sales at clothing establishments jumped in 2014.

5. Key trends • Further indication of tourism industry performance in Finney County is the growth of employment in key tourism sectors. • Leisure and hospitality employment growth in Finney County has continually outperformed the state as a whole. • While overall county employment has been flat over the past four year, leisure and hospitality employment growth in the county is surging.

6. Finney County, Tourism Sales • Visitor spending in Finney County grew 9% in 2014, reaching $87 million. • This growth represented a $7.1 million increase over 2013 performance. • Visitor spending growth has averaged 4.4% per annum since 2010 even with the slow down in growth seen in 2013.

7. Finney County, Tourism Sales • Lodging spending rose $1.5 million in 2014 to $15.5 million and represents 18 cents of every dollar spent in Finney County. • The largest two categories of spending are transportation and food and beverages with $23.6 million spent at restaurants, bars and grocery stores in Finney County in 2014. • More than 20 cents of an average visitor dollar is spent at retail businesses in the county.

8. Finney County, Tourism Impact • Direct visitor employment grew 4% in 2014, to 883 jobs. Tourism supports a total of more than 1,150 jobs - 6.2% of all jobs in the county.

9. Finney County, Tourism Impact • Visitor activity supported $13.2 million in governmental revenues of which $8.2 million accrued to state and local governmental authorities. • Finney County ranks 11th in visitor sales among all counties in Kansas with 1.4% of all visitor sales in the state in 2014. • Finney County’s strong visitor spending gains helped the county gain market share in 2014.

10. Methodology and Background

11. Why quantify the tourism economy? • By monitoring tourism’s economic impact, policy makers can make informed decisions regarding the funding and prioritization of tourism development. • With this information, interested parties can also carefully monitor tourisms successes and future needs. • In order to do this, tourism must be measured in the same categories as other economic sectors – i.e. tax generation, employment, wages, and gross domestic product.

12. Why is this a challenge? • Most economic sectors such as financial services, insurance, or construction are easily defined within a country’s national accounts statistics. • Tourism is not so easily measured because it is not a single industry. It is a demand-side activity which affects multiple sectors to various degrees. • Tourism spans nearly a dozen sectors including lodging, recreation, retail, real estate, air passenger transport, food and beverage, car rental, taxi services, travel agents, museums, and theme parks.

13. Methods and data sources • Estimates of visitor expenditures were based on several sources including: • County tax data on sales tax receipts by industry. • County employment and wage data broken out by industry. • Recreational second home expenditures based on US Census data. • Local impacts were calculated by using the state impact analysis as a control and local industry sales and employment data along with the estimates of visitor spending. Tourism Economics then cross checked these findings with employment and wage data for each sector to ensure the findings are within reasonable ranges. • Employment and wage data were obtained from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the US Census Bureau.

14. Definitions • Direct spending/visitor spending: any spending directly from a traveler’s pocket into the local economy. • Direct impacts: all jobs and wages supported only by the direct spending of visitors. • Total impacts: all jobs and wages supported by visitor economic activity. This includes the direct impacts along with indirect (supply-chain effects), induced (wage effect) and any capital investment and governmental spending in support of tourism in the local economy.

15. Description of spending categories

16. For more information: Adam Sacks, Managing Director adam@tourismeconomics.com Christopher Pike, Director cpike@tourismeconomics.com