HOT PURSUIT
Anyone who ventured into Owatonna during the special Downtown Thursdays this summer knows that the area was bustling with activity. But many were left wondering just exactly how busy it was.
The Owatonna Chamber of Commerce has an almost precise answer. The highest attended Downtown Thursday was in June with 5,700 people, and the average of the four special events was 4,200, according to Brad Meier, Chamber president. The International Model T tour that came to Owatonna in July attracted 6,000 visitors over three special events throughout the week.
Curious minds, mine included, have been left wondering how it’s even possible to come up with an estimated number.
The Chamber has partnered with the Owatonna Partners for Economic Development on a new tool to gauge attendance metrics. Convention and Visitors Bureau Director Glenda Smith has been coordinating the effort over the past year.
Owatonna has been utilizing a service called, “Placer AI,” which is a location intelligence platform that uses artificial intelligence to analyze anonymized foot traffic and movement data from mobile devices. Not surprisingly, they’re targeting your cell phones, which as we know most everyone has one these days.
“It allows us to see estimated attendance based off our phones that we carry around,” Smith said in explaining the new service. “It’s meant to track foot traffic.”
Even though Owatonna acquired the software in January, the tool allows officials to do comparisons to previous years. Smith said it can pull data back to 2018, which allows her to see the significant growth Owatonna has experienced over recent years.
For May through July of this year, Owatonna had 40,500 overnight trips registered in the city, which is a 16% increase over the previous year, Smith said. The top cities Owatonna is drawing from are Minneapolis, St. Paul, Bloomington, Duluth, Chicago, Des Moines, Omaha, Winona, Fargo and St. Cloud.
For the 12-month period from July to July, Owatonna registered 132,000 overnight trips with a 10.3% increase over the previous year. Smith said visitors to the city have spent $83.4 million over the past year in Owatonna.
“The majority of people are staying one to two days,” said Smith, noting summer is the obvious heaviest season during the year.
Though the service generates data from cell phones, Smith is quick to point out that the tool cannot pinpoint one person and follow someone around. It’s also restricted to tracking government functions and worship locations.
While the total attendance figure is perhaps the most popular number the public wants to know, Chamber officials are more curious about other data that it generates. “It pulls information where people are coming from or if we are seeing a draw from outside the community,” Smith said.
Knowing where people are coming from is particularly helpful for Smith to target digital marketing in those areas. “We can put more marketing to those cities and in between,” she said. “It creates that full circle of knowing where your market is coming from. We want to target the right people.”
Most importantly, Smith said they want to let the estimated 40,000 motorists on the I -35 corridor know there is more to Owatonna than the Bass Pro Shop. “There is a whole community just a mile off the interstate,” she said.
In the case of the Model T tour, 60% of the 6,000 visitors were from outside the area, Smith said. She added the Placer AI service is 98% reliable.
“We are just getting into it and learning it,” she said. “There is a ton of information.”
Smith added the Chamber hasn’t developed protocols yet for utilizing this tool in the greater community, but they are willing to share any information with organizers of other community events. She encouraged anyone interested to contact the Chamber office.
Other upcoming events that Smith will be keeping a close eye on are Downtown Trick or Treating event in next week and the Holiday Parade in December.
Cell phone technology will continue to aide Chamber officials with being in hot pursuit of tracking just how popular community events are in Steele County.