More than 3.7 million people visited America’s premier wine region last year, according to a recent economic study, and those visitors are becoming younger and more diverse. That’s good news for Napa Valley wineries just four years after the pandemic shut down almost all visits and at a time when many worry that visiting Napa is becoming increasingly expensive and only attractive to older, wealthier consumers.
The study was conducted for Visit Napa Valley, the county’s tourism marketing organization, by Future Partners, a San Francisco-based travel and tourism marketing research company, which collected data via more than 1,700 surveys. Visit Napa Valley normally conducts such studies every two years, but the reports were put on hold during the pandemic, meaning no data has been collected since 2018.
Visitor Spending Has Surpassed Pre-Pandemic Levels
The biggest finding was that the total number of visitors was down 5 percent from 2018, when 3.9 million people visited. That’s nearly a complete recovery from the pandemic. What’s more, spending by those visitors has surpassed pre-pandemic levels, contributing more than $2.5 billion to the local economy in 2023, a 13 percent increase from 2018, according to the data. While 2.3 million of the visitors were day trippers, the guests who stayed the night in hotels spent more than two-thirds of the hospitality money generated in the valley.
For wineries, particularly smaller wineries that struggle to find national distribution, visitors are their bread and butter, often joining mailing lists and buying direct, which can be an invaluable source of revenue. They also tend to become loyal customers.
County authorities have been clamping down on winery tourism with increasing restrictions on tasting rooms, which has provoked a lot of grumbling among wineries, who point out that tourism for wineries is a leading source of business and tax revenue for the community. The tourism industry remains the second largest employer in Napa County, after the wine industry, providing an estimated 16,000 jobs in the region.
“One of the many positive benefits of these strong economic results is how they directly impact Napa Valley residents’ quality of life,” said Emma Swain, chair of the board of directors for Visit Napa Valley and CEO of Supéry Estate Vineyards and Winery, in a statement. “For example, visitors to the Napa Valley pay a Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) on every overnight hotel stay. These dollars go directly to our local governments’ general funds to help pay for public safety, libraries, parks and recreation, road repair and more to support a high quality of life for locals.”
Those Visitors are Slowly Becoming Younger and More Diverse
The guests coming to taste are an increasingly younger, diverse group, the study found. While the core visitors to Napa Valley are classified as luxury travelers, usually 50 years and older, with an annual income that exceeds $250,000, the local wine industry hopes to attract more millennials who are just starting to build wealth.
The study found that roughly half of visitors in 2023 were millennials. The average age of visitors was 40, six years younger than the average in 2018. And between 2018 and 2023, the percentage of Black visitors grew from 4 percent to 11 percent; the share of Latino visitors increased from 10 percent to 17 percent; and visitation from the LGBTQ community doubled, from 4 percent to 8 percent in 2023, according to the report.
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