School is out, warm weather has arrived, and the summer visitor season is now in full swing. In Johnson County, summer months have a different feel compared to those months during the academic year. In downtown Iowa City, University of Iowa classes have ended for the spring semester and a majority of the over 30,000 students have left the greater Iowa City area for the summer. Students, who are appreciated customers, are no longer interacting with local businesses and other local favorites. This leaves most of the Johnson County summer activity to yearlong residents and out of town visitors. And many sectors remain busy and active despite the change in student population.
Johnson County generates hundreds of millions of dollars in economic impacts each year from visitors and tourism, demonstrating that Johnson County is a place people want to visit, spend their time, and money. Greater Iowa City, Inc.’s most recent data reports that, in 2024, Johnson County had 5.1 million visitors who live outside of the county. According to Think Iowa City, the Iowa City area’s convention and official destination management organization, in 2023, outside visitors spent over $458 million in our county, equating to $2,958 spent for every 1 Johnson County resident. That’s a big impact and spend from dollars earned outside of our county, largely driven by Johnson County’s tremendous quality of life amenities such as our entertainment venues, businesses and shopping centers, outdoor recreation opportunities, and community-wide events.
Tourism drives economic growth by generating local revenue, stimulating our businesses, and even sustaining jobs. Greater IC dug into the data to answer these questions and learn more about Johnson County’s tourism landscape, examining data vital to our businesses’ short- and long-term strategies and successes.
Total Visitation Trends
In 2024, Johnson County attracted 5.1 million unique visitors who made just under 30 million trips to individual places (stores, shops, parks, restaurants, and similar) throughout Johnson County.
How does this number of visitors compare over time? In 2020, Johnson County hit a 7-year low in visitation, dropping to just 3.8 million visitors due to COVID-19 and its associated travel restrictions. The two years prior to the pandemic, 2018 and 2019, were Johnson County’s 7-year highs in visitation. In 2019, we had 5.3 million visitors. Each year since 2019 has experienced steady growth in visitation, though we have not yet reached the same level of visitation as we did before 2020.
Even with a large chunk of the greater Iowa City area student population absent during the summer months, summer tourism is close to Johnson County’s visitation peak in the fall. In 2024, August and September had the most visits at 2.8 million and 2.6 million, respectively.
May, June, July, October, and November are all a close second at 2.5 million visits each, but for different reasons. The three summer months attract a breadth of visitors taking summer trips, while the peak visitation in the fall months is likely inflated due to University of Iowa activities. Particularly, the highly attended and anticipated home football games at Kinnick Stadium drive up the number of out of county visitors.
Breaking down visitation trends even further, Greater IC data shows that when an outside visitor comes to Johnson County, they spend a median time of two and a half hours during their trip. Most visitors spend between 2-4 hours (21%) and 1-2 hours (19%) during their visit, though many stay between 12-24 hours (16%), signaling overnight stays at our area hotels.
Johnson County’s Visitor Trade Area
In community and economic development, a trade area is a geographic area from which a community generates the majority of its customers. Johnson County is uniquely placed along both Interstate 80 and Highway 218, making us an easy pass through for residents from larger metropolitan areas in Iowa like Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, the Quad Cities, and even Waterloo. Additionally, with a large student population, Johnson County sees lots of visits by out-of-state student families from nearby areas like Chicago and Minneapolis.
The map below shows Johnson County’s visitor trade area. The map highlights the top 100 zip codes that visitors originate from. Visually, this large trade area spans much of the eastern and central portions of Iowa.
Notably, the top five zip codes with the most visits are all from the Cedar Rapids area, which accounted for 14.7% of all visits to Johnson County. Cedar Rapids’ proximity to the greater Iowa City area results in a high number of frequent trips.
77% of all visits came from visitors traveling over 10 miles away:
- 0-10 miles: 23%
- 10-30 miles: 20%
- 30-50 miles: 14%
- 50-100 miles: 16%
- 100-250 miles: 19%
- 250+ miles: 9%
How does Greater Iowa City, Inc. use this data for our work?
Tourism is a catalyst for economic activity and growth in Johnson County. We recognize the importance of outside dollars being spent right here at our own businesses. To help our local businesses track these trends and impacts on business, we include the number of visitors to our county as a measure in our Johnson County benchmark report, the Data Digest. In the Data Digest, we compare Johnson County’s overall visitation and visitor spending data to similar counties across the nation to gauge how we are doing in relationship to those other areas. We track:
- Visitors
- Visitors per capita
- Visitor spending
- Visitor spending per capita
In addition to tourism, Greater IC’s Data Digest will continually track other imperative data measures outlined by our area stakeholders. This data includes measures related to business and labor, market characteristics, housing, childcare, and more.
To find the most up to date data for our community, read our 2024 Data Digest or contact Evan Doyle (evan@greateriowacity.com) for more information.
Data sourced from Placer.ai.
Photo sourced from Think Iowa City.
