As a local governmental department, Visit Oxford’s job is to bring tourists to Oxford to help bring in tourism tax money that helps fund local projects.

Last week, Kinney Ferris, the executive director, and Nadia Thornton, director of sales and marketing, and presented annual figures to the Oxford Board of Aldermen that showed they did just that.

The city department heads are meeting with the aldermen to go over their proposed budgets for Fiscal Year 2024-2025. Visit Oxford is requesting $607,000 from the city for its budget and an additional $200,000 for Double Decker. Visit Oxford also receives the funds from the city’s Hotel/Motel tax.

“We thought this was a good time to show you all that tourism does for our city before we ask you for money,” Ferris told the Aldermen with a chuckle.

Visitors spent a total of $208.5 million in Oxford during the 2022-2023 fiscal year, which runs from Oct. 1 through Sept. 30.

The amount of taxes collected from visitors was $20.7M, up from $16M in the previous fiscal year, which had a direct effect on each household in Oxford, equating to $782 in total savings per household.

Travel and tourism are one of the largest sectors of employment in Oxford and Lafayette County, supporting over 4,800 direct jobs and representing 27% of the total jobs in the local community.

During the Double Decker Arts Festival, which is the largest event in Oxford, visitors spent $16.3 million and Visit Oxford estimates that 100,300 people attended the event in April.

Holly Jolly Holidays, held from November through January, saw 10,000 skaters.

The upcoming Holly Jolly Holidays will be held at mTrade Park where the city is building a permanent structure for the ice-skating rink and a Walk of Lights display of custom-designed illuminations that pays homage to Oxford’s history, from the famous Double Decker Bus to the Oxford skyline.