This previous 12 months was a considerably profitable one for whiskey tourism in Kentucky, per new customer information.
The Kentucky Bourbon Path — a group of 18 historic distilleries — and its accompanying Craft Tour recorded a complete of over two million guests in 2022, in keeping with a Feb. 6 press launch from the Kentucky Distillers’ Affiliation. Some 2,135,555 visits have been recorded final 12 months, the biggest quantity within the attraction’s historical past.
The Kentucky Bourbon Path was created by the Kentucky Distillers’ Affiliation in 1999 and focuses on academic experiences at a number of the state’s most well-known distilling areas. The earlier report, set in 2019, documented 1.7 million visits to the “amber journey.”
“It’s unbelievable to see attendance for the Kentucky Bourbon Path attain an all-time excessive in 2022, the identical 12 months this signature business noticed record-breaking investments and job development,” Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear states within the launch. “The success of Kentucky’s Bourbon business isn’t slowing down any time quickly, and I’m grateful to KDA, the distilleries, our tourism companions, and all of the wonderful Kentuckians who work laborious to make this business so particular.”
As for customer demographics, the Kentucky Distillers’ Affiliation some 70 p.c of bourbon vacationers originate from outdoors Kentucky. They have a tendency to skew youthful, have family incomes over $100,000, and spend a mean of $400–$1,200 on their journey. Compared to different guests to the Bluegrass State, whiskey vacationers usually keep longer and journey in bigger teams.
Kentucky Bourbon Path Craft Tour — based in 2012 as a strategy to showcase 24 smaller, craft bourbon distilleries within the state — recorded 738,287 visits in 2022.
This milestone in Kentucky’s whiskey tourism comes after a record-breaking 12 months for the state’s bourbon gross sales. Distillers within the state stuffed a whopping 11.4 million barrels in 2021, accounting for some $5 million in gross sales.
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