2024 tourist season off to a great start in Rapid City

RAPID CITY, S.D. (KOTA) – Tourism plays a big part in our community and the tourist season in the Black Hills is in full swing.

Memorial Day weekend is around the time South Dakota sees an increase in tourists. Tourism is a crucial industry for western South Dakota. Black Hills & Badlands Tourism Association President Michelle Thomson knows it. She says they, as well as other tourist associations, ramp up to promote and bring in tourists during the summer season.

“We work really hard to target the correct markets and to target the correct people to bring them into this area and get them to spend as much time as possible really experiencing how wonderful this area is,” Thomson said.

According to the Economic Impact of Tourism in South Dakota, since 2020, an average of 14 million visitors traveled here and spent an average of 4.3 billion dollars. Last year, more than 57 thousand jobs were supported, and 384 million dollars in tax revenue was generated thanks to tourism alone.

Thomson says this year in the Black Hills and Badlands, things are taking off a little slower but she’s not worried.

“Research is showing that maybe we’re a little bit soft going into the summer, but it’s nothing for us to be worried about yet because we do have a lot of summer left and we always have a very strong fall travel season as well,” Thomson said.

On the other hand, CEO of Visit Rapid City Brook Kaufman says lodging is up 23% compared to last year in Rapid City.

“And then rate continues to inch up as well, so what people paid last year per a hotel room versus this year, we’re seeing a slight increase as well so really a good strong start financially to the visitor season in Rapid,” Kaufman said.

For the first time this year, Travel South Dakota developed a Head for the Hills Mobile Passport activity available to visitors looking to maximize their time in South Dakota by checking out over 40 different attractions.

“So it’s been a really fun way to promote more of what there is to see and do in the Black Hills and Badlands region. People can check that out on Travel South Dakota.com,” Thomson said.

See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? Please click here to report it.

Do you have a photo or video of a breaking news story? Send it to us here with a brief description.

Copyright 2024 KOTA. All rights reserved.