Local

One Spark brings $1.8 million in tourism

Could Jacksonville have created a new signature event to stack up with Florida/Georgia or other local staples?

“It’s still a prominently local event, but we are seeing more visitation being driven from outside of the county,” says Visit Jacksonville Spokesman Ron Whittington.

The One Spark festival which took over Downtown Jacksonville in April saw an estimated 260,000 attendees. A survey conducted by UNF and funded through Visit Jax found about 51,000 in that crowd came from outside of Duval.

“They come in and visit, they spend money at restaurants, they rent cars,” Whittington says.

In all, the survey estimates the economic impact of the tourism from One Spark at around $1.8 million, including 1600 hotel nights booked.

“We’re going to build on that next year,” Whittington says.

He says they were pleased to see how much tourism around that event had grown from the first year of the festival to the second, and with the organizers bringing it to Berlin now, Whittington expects tourism will climb even further.

He says moving in to next year they will be increasing their marketing along the east coast to drive continued tourism for this event. They’re also conducting surveys at other events, like the recent “Welcome to Rockville” concert, to better understand who travels to Jacksonville.

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