There are dates on our personal calendars that are sure things – a holiday, a birthday, or that annual family gathering.

Hamilton County’s tourism industry calendar is much the same way, but there also are shifts in holidays, concert schedules and other things out of our control that can often be hugely impactful lodging and visitor spending in a particular month. 

Summer 2023 brings many interesting calendar shifts that Hamilton County Tourism is closely monitoring. One of them is the Ruoff Music Center calendar, which drives a significant portion of our leisure visitation spring through fall each year. The local management team has little influence over who is touring the country each year and when they choose to pass through Hamilton County. But it makes a huge difference locally as seen here by this short summary:

• Ruoff Music Center hosted 15 concerts in May and June 2022. It hosted just seven concerts during the same period in 2023.
• In July and August 2022, it hosted 21 concerts total, but will host 24 this year during that same period. And of course, we look forward to hosting a successful Farm Aid in September.

How can these calendar shifts truly impact the local economy?

• In 2022, Ruoff visitors accounted for 47.5% of all visitors to East Noblesville from May-June compared with just 11.3% of all visitors to that location this year (a decline that’s so steep, other factors must also be at play). 
• The impact of this change can be measured in fewer hotel rooms sold (almost 3,000 fewer rooms sold for May and June this year versus the same months last year in Noblesville alone), and in visitor spending, which dropped 7.6% per capita this year versus last year. Also, visitor spending in East Noblesville as a part overall county spending dropped almost 2 points for just those two months. 

As our hotels – and HCT -- begin finalizing their 2024 budgets, understanding calendar shifts can be important, along with knowing what major events could positively, negatively, or randomly shift sales next year from one period to another. 

Hamilton County Tourism continues to dig deeper to understand how the calendar of events shape the local tourism economy, but often not all parts of the crystal ball are visible enough to adequately prepare for it. This requires flexible and careful budgeting and hopes for other opportunities to fill the gaps in the short term.