Community Development Committee Receives 2024 Tourism Impact Report – Expo Center Debt On Track To Be Paid Off Early

The Community Development Committee met 06/25/2025. The bulk of the meeting was taken up with the 2024 Tourism Impact Report which was given by Pam Seidl, the Executive Director of the Fox Cities Convention and Visitors Bureau.

She highlighted that in 2024 tourism brought $603.2 million in direct visitor spending to the area with a total of $787.6 million in total economic impact. She also noted that room tax was being generated faster than anticipated and they were between 5 and 8 years ahead of schedule paying down the Exhibition Center.

I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:

The slides for the presentation are fairly straight forward and, in some respect speak for themselves.

On paper, direct visitor spending has increased over 2019 pre-Covid levels. In 2019 the Fox Cities experienced $511.1 million in direct visitor spending. That dropped down markedly in 2020 and 2021 during Covid, but has since rebounded, and in 2024 we experienced $603.2 million in direct visitor spending. Ms. Seidl that some of the increases in spending were because things had normalized after Covid but some of the increases were due to inflation. Additionally, she said it was the result of more tourism in the area that was partly prompted by investments in the regional tourism infrastructure.

[For what it’s worth, I plugged in $511.1 million into an inflation calculator which says that $511.1 million in 2019 is equivalent to $642.66 million in 2025 dollars which is $40,000 less than where we are presently at and our tourism rebound exists at least partially only on paper.]

In 2024, tourism generated $66.7 million in state and local taxes. Ms. Seidl told the committee that each household in the Fox Cities would need to be taxed an additional $633 per year to replace the amount brought in through tourism.

She reviewed the room tax. The Fox Cities has a 10% room tax assessed on hotel rooms and short-term rentals. 1.15% is retained by the individual municipalities. 3% goes to pay off the bonds for the Fox Cities Expo Center. 3% goes to pay off the bonds for the Community First Champions Center. And 2.85% goes to pay for the operation of the Fox Cities Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Only 9 municipalities generate room tax of any note, with the two largest generators being Grand Chute and Appleton. Grand Chute contains the most number of hotels and generates 46% of the total room tax. Appleton contains the largest hotel and accounts for 34% of the total room tax. Overall, they are generating more room tax than expected which will allow them to pay off the debt associated with the Expo Center and the Community First Champion Center more quickly. Ms. Seidl believed they were between 5 and 8 years ahead of schedule on paying off the Expo Center bonds.

There was some discussion about short term rentals. The municipalities are receiving more short-term rental room taxes now. This is due to more short-term rentals being in the market. Most are opportunity rentals associated with events such as the NFL draft, EAA, and Packer home games, but there has also been an increase in ones that are run like a business and rented out year round. Municipalities have worked on educating owners about the rules and regulations associated with operating such rentals, and third-party rental companies such as Airbnb and VERBO have started sending in room taxes in accordance with state law; however, those third-party companies have not been particularly willing about doing that and do not identify which specific houses the room taxes they pay are associated with, so the municipalities are left to trust that the amount of money they are being paid in taxes from those businesses are the amount of taxes they should be being paid.

There was discussion about who was coming to the Fox Cities and where they were coming from. The majority of visitors came from other parts of Wisconsin. The top places of origin were Milwaukee and Madison, followed by places up north such as Wausau, Rhinelander, and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. They do also get visitors from Minneapolis and the Dubuque, Iowa area. Some of this business resulted from people coming to the area as part of a sports tourism or event at the expo center and then realizing they liked the area and wanted to come back.

The single biggest tourism event is Mile of Music. They also see a spike during Octoberfest; however Octoberfest doesn’t result in a large spike in hotel stays because the people who attend from out of town tend to be people who grew up in the area and come home to visit for it and end up staying with family or friends.

There were questions about the impact of the NFL Draft Day. It was a mixed bag and wasn’t necessarily everything they had hoped. Hotel rates had been extremely high which could have negatively impacted the number of people who stayed in the area, but because they were so high they generated a lot of room tax. The hotels were not full during the Draft. Only 6 or 7 hotels had been full on Thursday night. Friday night had been solid but not sold out. By Saturday most hotels had plenty of available rooms.

There had been a number of events that had not been pursued during that time out of fear there wouldn’t be enough hotel rooms. For example, the Champion Center didn’t hold a tournament that weekend, and some of the hotels didn’t take weddings that weekend. In retrospect, those types of events could probably have been held even with the Draft going on. Ms. Seidl said the Convention and Visitors Bureau “would really be supportive if Green Bay wants to do this again, because we learned some things, and we could probably even do it, you know, better and generate a real significant amount of visitor spending, you know, for a four- or five-day period in the Fox Cities area.”

View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1314145&GUID=825F0F84-67D8-4C8A-BDB1-B4ED97054D10