Visit Salt Lake and members of the South District CTA committee briefed the Sandy City Council on the Convention and Tourism Assessment (CTA) and what they described as early gains for Sandy hotels and local businesses.

The presentation, led by Visit Salt Lake representatives including Clay Partain, Chief Sports Officer, Krista Parrig, Brand and Experience Officer, and Braden O’Brien, outlined CTA-funded marketing, event attraction and a district-level development budget aimed at increasing hotel room nights and local spending.

Visit Salt Lake said Sandy has eight hotels totaling a little more than 1,000 rooms and that CTA-participating hotels in the South District averaged roughly 70% occupancy at an average daily rate near $120. The presenters said Sandy hotels generated about $25,000,000 in room revenue last year and that visitors account for roughly 27% of all spending in Sandy across food, beverage, retail and entertainment.

Krista Parrig said CTA funds are pooled and redistributed by district; 50% of CTA revenues, she said, go to districtwide development and programming overseen by an executive committee, while a South District bucket supports district-specific sales and incentives. Parrig said the South District had a 2024 budget of about $7.8 million and a 2025 budget of about $8.3 million.

Clay Partain and the committee members said CTA investments helped attract 22 events to Sandy venues in the committee’s recent reporting period, which they said were expected to produce about 243,000 attendees, 169,000 room nights and an estimated $107,000,000 in economic impact. Partain cited specific events hosted at the Mountain America Expo Center and America First Field, including USA Gymnastics championships, volleyball events and a recent National Horseshoe Pitchers Association world championship.

Jennifer George (general manager, Residence Inn by Marriott, Sandy) and Mary Birch (director of sales, Hyatt House Sandy) also spoke as South District committee members and emphasized industry collaboration among hoteliers and the ‘for hotels, by hotels’ governance model for spending CTA dollars. They said CTA-funded marketing on platforms such as Expedia drove about 5,000 incremental room nights in a recent campaign and delivered a reported 7:1 return on ad spend for that effort.

Council members asked about the Salt Palace Convention Center construction window and opportunities to shift events to Mountain America Expo Center. Visit Salt Lake described ongoing efforts to rebook and incentivize events that might otherwise be displaced by Salt Palace construction, and said the CTA can be used to help offset added costs for event promoters when they must use multiple venues.

The presentation was informational; council members expressed support and asked for follow-up detail on the economic-impact methodology. Visit Salt Lake said it uses a combination of the Destinations International economic impact calculator and Xartico credit-card-spend data to estimate visitor spending and impact, and offered to provide the underlying calculator outputs if council members wanted them.

No formal council action or vote was associated with the presentation.