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Clay County Tourism Director Talks 2023 Numbers

February 08, 2024 Steve Schwaller

(Spencer)– The Spencer City Council Monday evening heard an update from Clay County Tourism. Director Olivia Baxter reported some 140,000 people visited Clay county in 2023. She says the majority of them came from metro areas…

“They’re primarily coming from Des Moines, Ames area, Sioux City and Sioux Falls.”

Baxter also provided a breakdown on tourism-related spending in Clay county during 2022, the most recent year for which statistics are available through the Iowa Tourism Office…

“Total business sales in Clay county in the year of 2022 was $59.7 million. $40 million of that was direct visitor spending which as you can see was a 7.7 percent increase to the previous year. And then we also earned $8.3 million in state and local tax which is very exciting, and we can pull these reports from the last couple of years and it’s trending upward and I foresee it to continue doing that.”

Baxter adds the month of September draws the largest number of visitors, largely due to the Clay County Fair. She says April is the second biggest month. Baxter says tourism numbers will be boosted even more in 2024 thanks to the International Harvester “Red Power Round-Up” that will be going on in June at the Clay County Fairgrounds…

“That’s project to bring 15 to 20 thousand people, so we’ve been working with them since about 2021 which was actually before I even started. It’s going to be a really great event and we have plans to get them all over the county, lots of tours and lots of marketing and we’re just super excited for that.”

The event will be held June 20th-23rd. Jerome Hertel, CEO of the Clay County Fair, told the council every building in the fairgrounds will be in use during that event.

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