STR Tracking for Sonoma County
Things to Note:

  • STR is comparing “Weekly Year Over Year”
  • 40 of the county’s 112 hotels reported to STR in June
  • The average from other destinations includes: Napa, Palm Springs, Monterey, South Lake Tahoe, and Vallejo/Napa Valley
  • For more information on how data is calculated due to hotel closures, please refer to this document.
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Today's Takeaways
From SCT's director of marketing systems & insights, Ariane Hiltebrand
This week, Destination Analysts are seeing the sixth consecutive week of further setbacks in travelers’ sentiment due to the news of increasing COVID cases and returns to more stringent restrictions in many states including California. Although sentiment towards travel for the remainder of 2020 remains depressed, let’s focus on those 41% of American travelers who are still interested in a getaway in the next month, and an even bigger number that is still interested in fall travel.

In terms of the safety of perceived travel activities, road trips top the list followed by outdoor recreation such as hiking/biking, visiting friends and relatives, shopping, staying in a hotel and dining in a restaurant, which is all good news for a destination like Sonoma County. Least safe activities are still listed as cruises, buses and large events.

Regarding the perceived safety of trip types, we are happy to see that “wine country trip” tops the list of given trip type choices as somewhat safe or very safe this week. Destination Analysts’ survey shows that travelers can best be reached by a combination of website, email, online articles/blogs, Facebook, Instagram, online ads etc. (ranked in order of importance). E-mail emerged as the single best tactic to reach travelers with messaging at this time. Communicating about mask wearing for both visitors and residents is becoming a critically important aspect of destination messaging, since this is important for both sides to rebuild trust.
Destination Analysts Key Findings to Know
From the 7/19 Destination Analysts' Travel Sentiment Report
  • Travel morale remains depressed: a record 46.7% of American travelers now say they don’t have any trip plans for the remainder of 2020.

  • Over two-thirds of American travelers plan to wear a face mask during trips and largely plan to practice other pandemic etiquette such as following social distancing guidelines.

  • When asked how they would feel if a destination they wanted to visit required visitors and residents to wear masks while in public, over two-thirds (67.4%) said that would make them happy.

  • Of the 9.5% that expressed unhappiness about a mask mandate, half said it would not keep them from visiting a place they otherwise wanted to visit.

  • Americans are exhibiting some signs of optimism as they look out at their travel future. Now, 16.0% say they expect to take more leisure trips in the next 12 months than they did in the previous year.

  • Another positive trend: 34.7% now say they will prioritize leisure travel in their budget and expected leisure travel spend for the next year is up to $2,721 from $2,361 six weeks ago.
Website Insights for sonomacounty.com
Looking at the week of July 10-16, traffic to sonomacounty.com is stable compared to the prior week. Top content that people were engaging with was the coronavirus info page, Life Opens Up summer campaign page, and editorial about what to expect when visiting Sonoma County now, what to do in Sonoma County this summer, outdoors activities, nature parks, coast, Russian River, Lake Sonoma and redwoods, glamping and camping, unique accommodations, wineries and road/bike trips.

In terms of city geo locations for website visitors we see our key drive markets on top of the list: San Francisco is the top source for website visitors with a share of now 17%, Sacramento is #3, Oakland #5 , San Jose is #6, and Los Angeles #7. We now see 3 out-of-state cities in the top 25: New York, Chicago, and Reno.