By Audrey Posten

Visitorship to Clayton County dropped by nearly 10,000 people from 2024 to 2025, according to Arrivalist data shared by the Clayton County Development Group (CCDG).

The annual report utilizes geolocation data from mobile devices while travelers are in Iowa, counting those who are 18 or older who have traveled at least 50 miles from home and spent a minimum of two hours in the county. From October 2024 to September 2025, it clocked 121,598 visitors to Clayton County, compared to 130,000 the previous year.

Guttenberg was the top-visited community in that span, at 28,193 people, followed by Garnavillo at 23,048—a number that accounts for the Clayton County Fair. Strawberry Point came in at 19,787, then McGregor 19,589 and Elkader at 12,976, to round out the top five.

“It was really interesting to see that some of our bigger communities, like Guttenberg, Marquette, McGregor, lost visitors coming, and places like Luana and Garnavillo—you have to take into account the county fair—increased, and Edgewood and Strawberry Point,” said CCDG Executive Director Darla Kelchen.

The Arrivalist data showed the most people, at just over 13 percent, visited Clayton County in June, followed by August at 12.7 percent and October 12.5 percent. At 3 percent, February was the month with the least visitors from October 2024 to September 2025.

A further dive into the data shows 40.2 percent of visits were for day trips and 27.3 percent were one-night stays. Two-night stays accounted for 16.7 percent of visits. 

Across Clayton County, Friday was the busiest day of the week, at 31.7 percent, then Saturday at 19.9 and Thursday 17.3. The fewest travelers are in the county on Tuesday and Sunday, with a respective 6.5 and 7.3 percent.

Over half the visitors to Clayton County in the past year came from Cedar Rapids/Waterloo/Dubuque, according to the Arrivalist data. The Des Moines/Ames area came in at 8.5 percent and La Crosse/Eau Claire at 7 percent.

Kelchen admitted the data isn’t perfect, but a good tool for herself and the county tourism team, which includes representatives from Clayton County communities.

“Unless you’re gonna go out at every event and look at license plates or count people, which is time consuming, this is the best thing we have,” she said.

Kelchen noted cabins, camping, fishing and water recreation continue to be big draws for Clayton County. 

“They want to relax, and they want an experience,” she said.

In a reflection of the visitor numbers, Kelchen said anecdotal evidence from Clayton County businesses indicated interest in shopping was down this past year. Lodging and restaurant establishments also cited fewer patrons. 

Less discretionary spending could be the cause.

“When there’s discretionary money, people will shop,” Kelchen said, “but the visitors we used to always get are tightening their belts. They don’t know what the economic conditions are going to be and cost of living.”

“But you can’t sit back and not do anything,” she continued, “so we’re putting more out there to people.”

A Clayton County tourism action team formed in 2014, at the encouragement of the Upper Mississippi Gaming Corporation (UMGC), to reduce redundancies, utilize a variety of marketing and reach a broader audience within and outside Iowa. Through this collaboration, the goal is to bring visitors to Clayton County and its communities, and thus dollars to businesses, events, attractions and points of interest that contribute to local option sales tax, hotel/motel tax and gas tax.

UMGC provides an annual dollar-for-dollar match to the tourism marketing team for these marketing efforts. Kelchen said that impact has grown as Clayton County’s hotel/motel tax has grown from $12,165 in 2014 to $38,789 in 2024.

“[In 2014], I was getting 50 percent of the hotel/motel tax in Clayton County. That does not include the towns. That’s just the county’s taxes,” Kelchen explained. “I would always ask for the previous year’s half. Now, you can see where we’re at today.” 

“When we started, we didn’t have a whole lot of dollars, and that’s where our communities came in. They sat around the table, they got a voice and everybody put money in the pot. I ask our county supervisors to give us a pledge letter, then I ask all our communities to put in. Then we take that and try to double it for the UMGC grant,” she continued. “We have to work together.”

Kelchen said marketing efforts focus on a mix of ages and demographics, ranging from print advertising in travel guides and magazines to television and radio commercials and social media. Trips to the state fair send four boxes of brochures into the world. Influencers were even utilized the past two years.

“Last year, we had a book writer. We had her go through the county and she got to stay, spend a night and day and a half in all the towns. She did a nice job,” said Kelchen. “Later, her and I had coffee together on a Saturday morning and she said, ‘Oh, my God, I didn’t know what was all up here to do.’ She wrote about our coffee shops, just the quaintness of rural Iowa, the peacefulness, the safety.”

Another initiative last year included the creation of videos in both English and Spanish highlighting lodging throughout Clayton County. The project was completed by a CCDG teacher extern and can be viewed on the CCDG website.

A new Clayton County Museum Crawl, which will be organized by the Clayton County Historic Preservation Commission in 2026, and the Farm to Fork dinner were also well received.

According to Kelchen, CCDG picks several focuses each year based on trends and needs. This year, tourism marketing efforts will focus on updating the CCDG and community tourism websites, trying email marketing, updating the 10-year-old Clayton County welcome map boards showing points of interest and creating a rack card highlighting local foods. The latter was inspired by Farm to Fork and will be done by Clayton Ridge business students.

“A lot of people ask, ‘Where can I eat? Where can I get coffee or a beverage?’ They also want to get local produce and healthy foods. Now, there’s so many people in our county that are making jellies or sourdough breads in their home-based businesses. We didn’t know about them. So I asked [students] to research and find them and make a card about it,” Kelchen shared.

There will be further focus this year on promoting fishing and side-by-side riding, as well. 

Kelchen said promotions will continue to use the tagline “Wow, who knew?” 

“That slogan came when visitors would walk through this door and they’d look at all this stuff and they’d go, ‘Wow, who knew there was so much to do up here?’ It was a visitor, many visitors actually, who walked in and used that tagline,” she stated. “It’s sort of catchy for northeast Iowa.”

Kelchen admitted trying to accomplish everything can be overwhelming. Her position includes both tourism and economic development, and she’d love another staff member to focus solely on tourism. Funding simply isn’t available.

She said that’s where partnerships and collaboration come in. They are vital to tourism.

“Our locals are great, but we are not a large enough population to sustain ourselves. Seventeen thousand people in this whole county, and the average age is 56. So the only way to bring money into this county is to bring visitors here. Because visitors will spend money,” Kelchen said. 

She’s hopeful Clayton County can continue to sustain and grow visitorship by offering good customer service and setting itself apart.

“One thing for Clayton County is we need to shift gears. People want experiences. That’s what it’s all about. Let’s give them something out of the norm and unique to set us apart from others,” she reflected.