Can anyone document that people no longer visit the ark encounter?
Ark Encounter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Attendance
AiG initially predicted yearly attendance for the attraction of 1.4-2.2 million people. After a year of operation, AiG reported attendance of about 1 million, attributing the lower number to opening in the middle of tourist season.[90][91][92]
On February 24, 2017, Executive Director of the Grant County Chamber of Commerce Jamie Baker stated that the Ark had drawn additional tourism to the area, and that the challenge now was to expand accommodation and other local amenities in order to convert this into economic growth for the county.[93] In March, the Northern Kentucky Convention and Visitors Bureau presented the Ark Encounter with its Star of Tourism award for 2016.[94] Bureau President Eric Summe reported a $23 million increase in visitor spending in nearby Boone, Kenton, and Campbell counties in 2016 over 2015, the year that the region hosted the Major League Baseball All-Star Game; Summe attributed a large part of the increase in spending and hotel occupancy to the opening of the Ark Encounter and an expansion of its sister attraction, AiG's Creation Museum.[95] In June 2017, Mayor Jim Wells of Dry Ridge, Kentucky stated that the Ark Encounter had a positive effect on the town, with hotel occupancy rates increasing from 60 to 98 percent since the opening of the attraction.[96] In July 2018, Nashville-based Athena Hospitality Group broke ground on a hotel and restaurant development in Dry Ridge, citing the need for more accommodations for Ark Encounter visitors as the motivation.[97] The planned development will accommodate three hotels and three restaurants, with the first hotel, an 80-room Comfort Suites projected to open in the third quarter of 2019.[97]
At the end of Ark Encounter's second year, AiG reported an attendance of 1 million visitors for the year.[98] Subsequently, The Courier-Journal reported that the Freedom From Religion Foundation had disputed those numbers based upon data obtained through open records requests made to Grant County.[99] According to the Foundation, the amount of money collected by the Grant County via its safety assessment fee on ticket sales indicated that only 862,471 people visited the attraction between July 2017 and June 2018.[99] In response, AiG spokesman Mark Looy told the paper that this method for calculating attendance was not reliable because it did not include non-paying guests such as children under 5, annual pass holders, and those with lifetime passes, all of whom are admitted to the park for free.[99] Because the city of Williamstown based their annual budget on AiG's attendance projections, the city was forced to readjust its budget downward when the number of paying guests fell short of 1 million.[100]
In 2020, Skinner noted that Ark attendance had been averaging about ten percent higher than the city had forecast until its temporary closure due to COVID-19.[81] At the end of the fiscal year, revenue from the safety assessment fell twenty percent short of projections
