More bums on seats in Tahoe
I’m afraid I can’t resist highlighting this fantastic example of working with the data sources that you have.
The Tahoe Daily Tribune reports how clued-up officials at the South Tahoe Public Utility District can get a good sense of the number of tourists in their coverage area by literally measuring their outputs.
Yup, they’re making a pretty good estimate of month on month visitor levels by essentially measuring “the sewage flow” that results from the area’s toilets getting flushed.
Above normal volumes of flushing presumably indicates either a swathe of stomach bugs, or more visitor bottoms on toilet seats. And they can cross reference with water use to determine that it is the latter!
The Tahoe Daily Tribune says that officials have noted that: “While the numbers paint a dismal portrait of travel to the South Shore for December, increased sewage flows followed early January storms that dropped feet of snow and spurred travel to the region.
Sewage flows from Jan. 12 and 13, the weekend after the series of storms, jumped above 4 million gallons per day, besting each daily sewage flow seen during the first three weeks in December.”
The article goes on to report that the “information correlates with anecdotal evidence from South Shore business organizations” but that “the Visitors Authority uses a more traditional approach when analyzing the number of people in town by looking at the revenue generated by the transient occupancy tax.”
I love that the smart thinking officials at the South Tahoe Public Utility District understand their data and its implications for what it is - quantifiable evidence of people and their associated behaviours.
And even those hard to measure part-day trippers need the loo - making me think that this is a measurement with potential!
Think I’ve gone too easy on the puns? I just have too much respect for the data! But read this great post from the Lake Tahoe Real Estate blog about the same story which crams in every pun and joke that I’ve resisted making - and a whole lot more.
Any other clever destinations out there that are counting their visitors’ outputs?
Come on, tell us, we won’t laugh!
This entry was posted on Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 6:37 pm and is filed under Destination research, Research tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
